HISTORY 



TI-PEDOBAPTISM 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 



A 



HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 



FROM THE 
RISE OF PEDOBAPTISM TO A. D. 1609 



ALBERT HENRY NEWMAN, D. D., LL. D. 
Professor of Church History in {Mc-Master University, Toronto, Canada 




PHILADELPHIA 

AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY 

1897 



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Copyright 1896 by the 
American Baptist Publication Society 



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THEODORE HARDING RAND, D. C. L. 

Ex-Chancellor of £Mc Master University 

AUGUSTUS HOPKINS STRONG, D. D., LL. D. 
President of Rochester Theological Seminary 

ALVAH HOVEY, D. D., LL. D. 

President of U^ewton Theological Institution 

AND 

HENRY GRIGGS WESTON, D. D., LL. D. 
President of Cromer Theological Seminary 

BEFORE THE STUDENTS OF WHOSE INSTITUTIONS 
MUCH OF THE MATERIAL HERE PRESENTED WAS 
DELIVERED IN THE FORM OF LECTURES, AND 
TO WHOM IN MANY WAYS THE AUTHOR IS 
DEEPLY INDEBTED, THIS VOLUME IS 
AFFECTIONATELY AND RESPECT- 
FULLY DEDICATED 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 
EARLY PERVERSIONS OF DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE IN 
RELATION TO BAPTISM, I 

Corrupting ideas. Baptismal regeneration. Sacerdotal- 
ism. Gnostic and Ebionitic views. Rise of infant bap- 
tism. Superstition and idolatry. 

CHAPTER II 

Ancient Sects in their Relation to Baptist Prin- 
ciples 15 

Montanism and Novatianism. Donatism. Jovinian and 
Vigilantius. Early British churches. The Paulicians. 
General observations. 

CHAPTER III 

Medieval anti-pedobaptism ; the petrobrusians 
and the arnoldists 30 

Peter and Henry. Anti-pedobaptists at Cologne. Arnold 
of Brescia. 

CHAPTER IV 

The Waldenses and Related Parties, 40 

Poor Men of Lombardy. Waldensian principles. Wal- 
densian organization. Waldensians in 1260. 

CHAPTER V 
THE TABORITES AND THE BOHEMIAN BRETHREN, ... 49 
Peter Chelcicky. The Bohemian Brethren. Lollards not 
Anti-pedobaptists. Bohemian influence in Germany. Mys- 
ticism and millenarianism. Remarks. 

CHAPTER VI 

The Zwickau Prophets, 62 

Social and religious agitation. Luther proves disappoint- 



viii TABLE OF CONTENTS 

fng. Miinzer at Zwickau. Munzer at Prague and Alstedt. 
The prophets at Wittenberg. Luther's triumph. Storch's 
later career. 

CHAPTER VII 
Thomas Munzer and the peasants' War, .... 77 

Pfeiffer and Muhlhausen. Return to Muhlhausen. The 
sword of Gideon. Chiliasm and mysticism. Remarks. 

CHAPTER VIII 
RADICAL AGITATION IN ZURICH AND IN WALDSHUT 
(1523-24), 88 

Agitation in Zurich, etc. Balthasar Hubmaier. Proceed- 
ings against Hubmaier. Hubmaierat Schaffhausen. Hub- 
maier on liberty of conscience. Hubmaier's return to Walds- 
hut. Parties at Zurich. Zwingli's opposition. 

CHAPTER IX 
ZURICH, SCHAFFHAUSEN, AND ST. GALL (1524-25), . . .105 
Pedobaptism enforced. Increasing severity. Hofmeis- 
ter's position. Hofmeister's banishment. Agitation at St. 
Gall. Uolimann and Grebel. Zwingli and Vadian. 

CHAPTER X 

BASEL, BERNE, GRUNINGEN, AND WALDSHUT (1524-25), . 120 
Disputation at Basel. Berne and Gruningen. Practice at 
Waldshut. Hubmaier and Zwingli. Conrad Grebel. 
Blaurock and Reublin. Denck, Sattler, and Hetzer. 

CHAPTER XI 

PERSECUTION AND DISPERSION, 134 

Motives of Persecutors. Disputation and imprisonment. 
Hubmaier's suffering at Zurich. Hubmaier's recantation. 
Hubmaier's departure. Churches organized. Conference 
of the cantons. Execution of Falk and Reimann. Exten- 
sion of Swiss influence. 

CHAPTER XII 
SILESIA 153 

Caspar Schwenckfeldt. Gabriel Ascherham. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS IX 

CHAPTER XIII 

THE AUGSBURG CENTER, 159 

Ludwig Hetzer. Hans Denck. Denck's teachings. Hans 
Hut. Eitelhans Langenmantel. Anti-pedobaptist conven- 
tion. 

CHAPTER XIV 

Hubmaier's Moravian Labors (1526-27), 173 

Hubmaier at Nikolsburg. Literary activity. Hubmaier 
on baptism and the Supper. Free will and magistracy. 
Hubmaier opposed to communism. Hubmaier's extradition 
demanded. Hubmaier's martyrdom. 

CHAPTER XV 

THE TYROL, 188 

Early evangelical teaching. Sixteen hundred martyrs. 
Increasing severity. Jacob Huter. Persecution and failure. 
The Wolkensteins. Amon and Greisinger. Lanzenstiel 
and Lochmayer. 

CHAPTER XVI 
AUSTRIA, 205 

Anti-pedobaptists at Steyer. Hut's Austrian labors. 
Hut's evangelists. Anti-pedobaptists at Linz. Ambrose 
Spitalmaier. Spitalmaier's views. Georg Schoferl. Mo- 
ravian influence. 

CHAPTER XVII 
MORAVIA AND BOHEMIA (1528 ONWARD), 222 

Blawermel and Scharding. Wilhelm Reublin. Reckless 
church discipline. Persecution in Moravia. Industry and 
prosperity. A surviving remnant. Doctrine and polity. 
Georg Zobel. 

CHAPTER XVIII 

THE STRASBURG CENTER, 238 

Capita on infant baptism. Carlstadt, Echsel, and Gross. 
Michael Sattler. Reublin and Kautz. Persecution. Mar- 
beck and Bucer. Marbeck's teachings. 

CHAPTER XIX 
MELCHIOR HOFMANN AND STRASBURG, 254 



X TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Hofmann at Dorpat. The Supper and magistracy. Plun- 
dered and banished. Hofmann at Strasburg. Hofmann 
and the Munster Kingdom. 

CHAPTER XX 
HOFMANN AND THE NETHERLANDS 264 

Lutheran and Zwinglian views. Hofmann's position. 
The end of the age, 1533. The incarnation. 

CHAPTER XXI 

HESSE, JULICH-CLEVE, AND WESTPHALIA, 273 

Melchior Rinck. Munster and Rothmann. Expulsion of 
the bishop. Roll and Rothmann. 

CHAPTER XXII 
THE MUNSTER KINGDOM 284 

Jan Matthys. John of Leyden. Fanaticism rampant. 
The fall of Munster. Rationale of the movement. 

CHAPTER XXIII 

Menno Simons and the Quiet anti-pedobaptists, . . 295 

Menno's conversion. Character of Menno's teaching. 
Philips and Bouwens. Menno in Cologne. Excessive dis- 
cipline. Controversy with Micronius. Strasburg confer- 
ence. Controversy on discipline. Menno's death. 

CHAPTER XXIV 
THE LATER MENNONITES, 314 

Mennonite Parties. The Bintgens controversy. Perse- 
cuted by the Reformed. The Rhynsburgers. 

CHAPTER XXV 
ITALY AND POLAND, 323 

CamilloRenato. Convention at Venice Manelfi's treach- 
ery. Letter from Moravia. Gherlandi and Saga. Polish 
Anti-pedobaptism. Racovian Catechism. Influence on 
English Baptists. 

CHAPTER XXVI 
ENGLAND (TO 1558), 340 



TABLE OF CONTENTS xi 

Lollards and Waldenses. The Lollards of Kyle. Dutch 
immigration. Radical evangelicalism. Persecution of Ana- 
baptists. Cranmer and foreign theologians. Cooke and 
Turner. Joan Boucher. 

CHAPTER XXVII. 
ENGLAND (i 558-1602), 357 

Enforcement of uniformity. Persecution. Foxe's peti- 
tion. Dutch influence. Robert Browne. Browne in Zee- 
land. Separatists and Anabaptists. 

CHAPTER XXVIII 
ENGLAND (1602-1609), 376 

Gainsborough and Scrooby. Smyth's separation. Smyth 
an Anti-pedobaptist. Smyth's defense. Se-baptism. Im- 
mersion or affusion. Smyth and the Mennonites. Helwys 
and Murton. 



A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 



CHAPTER I 



EARLY PERVERSIONS OF DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE IN 
RELATION TO BAPTISM 

THE claim of Baptists that in doctrine and in polity 
they are in substantial accord with the precept and 
the example of Christ and his apostles would seem to 
make it incumbent upon them to account for the early 
departure of the great mass of Christians from the apos- 
tolic norm. 

That the churches of the post-apostolic age did not 
long remain faithful to apostolic precept and example in 
all respects would be generally admitted. Christianity 
arose in an age of religious ferment. The philosophies 
and theosophies of the East had never been more active 
and aggressive than they were during the first three 
Christian centuries. In Alexandria, long before the be- 
ginning of the Christian era, Greek, Jewish, Egyptian, 
Persian, Old-Babylonian, and Indian thought had met, 
and eclectic systems were a characteristic feature of the 
intellectual life of the time. The same is true in a less 
degree of Rome, Antioch, and Ephesus, and indeed of 
the Empire in general. These elements were lying in 
wait, as it were, for nascent Christianity. Before the 
close of the apostolic age Gnosticism in some of its most 
dangerous forms had made its appearance and was begin- 
ning seriously to threaten the life of the churches. Is it 
to be wondered at that the succeeding age should have 



2 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

been marked by still graver and more widespread per- 
versions ? 

Among the universal features of paganism was belief 
in the efficacy of external rites. That the ordinances 
of baptism and the Lord's Supper should have been 
allowed to remain symbolical and memorial rites to be 
celebrated in simple obedience to the Master's command 
was more than could have been reasonably expected. 
Similar rites existed in paganism and were regarded as 
possessing magical virtue. The sacrificial system of 
Judaism and the Jewish purificatory rites would them- 
selves furnish a point of departure for the perversion of 
the Christian ordinances. 

Sacerdotalism was a common characteristic of pagan 
and current Jewish religion. That the Christian minister 
should soon cease to be a brother among brethren, owing 
common obedience to a common Lord, and as one chosen 
and set apart for Christian leadership presiding over the 
administration of discipline, of charity, and of the ordi- 
nances, and that he should come to be regarded as a me- 
diator between God and men, possessed of magical power 
by virtue of his office, was something that could have 
been avoided only by constant miraculous Divine inter- 
position. Such interposition, history attests, was with- 
held. Christianity was a leaven. The life and personal 
labors of the Christ and of his apostles and the inspired 
body of doctrine contained in the New Testament were 
given to the world. Churches were planted and organ- 
ized under inspired guidance. Henceforth the leaven 
was to be allowed to do its work, not certainly without 
Divine help and direction, but without such violent in- 
terposition as would interfere with development along 
natural lines. Pure Christianity was sure in the end to 
triumph ; but not until it had to a great extent absorbed, 
or been absorbed by, paganism. By becoming assimilated 



CORRUPTING IDEAS 3 

to paganism Christianity was to secure the nominal alle- 
giance of the peoples of Western Asia, Northern Africa, 
and Europe. Its vitality was never to be entirely de- 
stroyed, nor was there to be a time when Christ should 
be without faithful witnesses ; but organized Christianity 
was to become so corrupt and so perverse that the notes 
of the apostolic church could scarcely be discovered. 

The time would come when vital Christianity, with the 
Bible as its watchword and its guide, would powerfully 
reassert itself and would throw off the accretions of cen- 
turies; but so thoroughly entrenched did these corrup- 
tions become that the process must needs be a slow one. 
When we consider the obstacles to the restoration of 
apostolic Christianity that have presented themselves, 
the natural conservatism that shrinks from departure 
from traditional positions, the tremendous influence of 
State-churchism, and the preference of multitudes of 
people for a religion of forms and ceremonies, with its 
priestly absolutions and consolations, the wonder is that 
so much progress has been made. 

If the apostolic churches were Baptist churches, the 
churches of the second century were not. Still less were 
those of the third and the following centuries. 

Early in the second century, possibly during the last 
decade of the first, the idea came into vogue that while 
instruction in Christian truth and morals, repentance, 
faith, fasting, and prayer must precede baptism, the re- 
mission of sins takes place only in connection with the 
baptismal act. That certain New Testament representa- 
tions, when taken alone, can easily be so interpreted as 
to seem to favor this view of the relation of baptism to 
salvation may be freely admitted. That such an inter- 
pretation is wholly inconsistent with the trend of New 
Testament teaching — Baptists have always uncompromis- 
ingly maintained. 



4 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

In lapsing so speedily from the apostolic view of justi- 
fication by faith and regeneration by the Holy Spirit and 
in adopting the belief that regeneration is completed only 
in connection with an external rite, the post-apostolic 
church shows that it has already begun to yield to the 
all-pervasive pagan idea of the magical efficacy of water 
baptism. " The Pastor of Hermas," an allegorical writ- 
ing highly esteemed in the ancient church and probably 
written as early as A. D. 139, exhibits this doctrine in a 
transitional stage. In one passage it is said : " Whoso- 
ever with his whole heart changes his mind (repents) and 
purifies himself from all iniquity, and adds no more to his 
sin, will receive from the Lord a cure from all his former 
sins." Again: " The elect of God will be saved through 
faith." Yet (in Commandment IV., 3) it is said: 
" When we went down into the water and received re- 
mission from our former sins." Again (Similitude IX., 15, 
16) : " Into the water, therefore, they descend dead and 
arise living." The account of the tower (Vision III., 7) 
built up of stones that have passed through the water 
seems to imply the saving efficacy of baptism. The 
thought of the author appears to be, that while repentance, 
faith, and reformation of life must precede baptism, it is 
only in connection with the baptismal act that the re- 
mission of sins actually takes place. 

Similar is the teaching of Justin Martyr in his " First 
Apology," written at about the same date as the 
"Pastor": 

As many as are persuaded and believe to be true these things that 
are taught and spoken by us, and give assurance that they are able 
to live accordingly, are taught to pray and fasting to implore from 
God the forgiveness of sins previously committed, we ourselves 
praying and fasting with them. Then they are led by us where 
there is water and are regenerated in the same manner in which we 
ourselves were regenerated {chap. 61). 



BAPTISMAL REGENERATION 5 

His subsequent explanation makes it clear that he re- 
garded water baptism as absolutely essential. 

The so-called "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," 
which may possibly belong to the second half of the 
second century but which in its present form is probably 
much later, does not so explicitly teach baptismal regen- 
eration; but this view seems to be implied in the require- 
ment, in case of absolute lack of a sufficiency of water 
of any kind for baptism proper, that pouring water on 
the head three times be resorted to as a substitute. 
Catechetical instruction, repentance, fasting, and prayer 
must precede the baptismal rite. 

We may say in general, that during the greater part of 
the second century the idea prevailed that mere baptism 
without repentance and faith would be of no value and 
that the remission of sins takes place only in connection 
with the baptismal act. By the close of the second cen- 
tury the pagan view that water baptism possesses in 
itself magical efficacy begins to find expression. 

The most striking presentation of this conception, if 
not the earliest, is that of Tertullian. "Is it not won- 
derful too," he writes, "that death should be washed 
away by bathing ? " To justify such ascription of efficacy 
to water baptism he expatiates on the age and the dig- 
nity of water. "Water is one of those things that, be- 
fore all the furnishing of the world, were quiescent with 
God in a yet unshapen state." It is venerable, there- 
fore. It has dignity also as having been " the seat of the 
Divine Spirit, more pleasing to him, no doubt, than all 
the other then existing elements." "Water alone — al- 
ways a perfect, gladsome, simple, material substance, 
pure in itself . . . supplied a worthy vehicle for God." 
" Water was the first to produce that which had life, that 
it might be no wonder in baptism if water know how to 
give life." He speaks of water as "the primary prin- 



6 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

ciple of baptism." " The Spirit of God who hovered 
over the waters from the beginning would," he main- 
tained, " continue to linger over the waters of the bap- 
tized." "Thus," he continues, "the nature of the 
waters, sanctified by the Holy One, itself conceived 
withal the power of sanctifying." "All waters, there- 
fore, in virtue of the pristine privilege of their origin, do, 
after invocation of God, attain the sacramental power of 
sanctification ; for the Spirit immediately supervenes 
from the heavens and rests over the waters, sanctifying 
them from himself; and being thus sanctified they imbibe 
at the same time the power of sanctifying." 

It would serve no useful purpose to multiply quota- 
tions from subsequent Christian literature. The concep- 
tions of Tertullian speedily became the conceptions of 
the church. We are not aware that any contemporary 
writer called in question his view of the saving efficacy 
of water baptism. Yet Cyprian (about 253) denied that 
water alone, apart from the operation of the Holy Spirit, 
could cleanse from sin and sanctify. 1 

It is highly probable that the disposition to attach mag- 
ical significance to baptism and to surround its adminis- 
tration with mystery and ceremonial came into the 
church through the channel of Gnosticism ; although, as is 
well known, Gnostic mysteries were themselves derived 
from those that had long prevailed in pagan systems. 
We need only mention the elaborate initiatory rites of 
the Eleusinian, Pythagorean, Orphic, and Delphian mys- 
teries, of the old Egyptian priesthood, and of the Mithras 
worship. The fact is, there was a great fund of current 
thought and practice on this matter that was sure sooner 
or later to make its influence profoundly felt by Chris- 
tianity. That advanced ideas on the efficacy of baptism 
were prominent features of early Gnosticism the follow- 

1 Epistle LXXIV. 



GNOSTIC AND EBIONITIC VIEWS 7 

ing extract from the remarkable Gnostic writing " Pistis 
Sophia " makes clear : " Then came forth Mary and said : 
Lord, under what form do baptisms remit sins ? " After 
further elaboration of the question on the part of Mary 
and a somewhat extended answer, Christ is represented 
as replying : 

Now, therefore, if any one hath received the mysteries of bap- 
tism, those mysteries become a great fire, exceeding strong and wise, 
so as to burn up all the sins : and the fire entereth into the soul 
secretly, so that it may consume within it all the sins which the count- 
terfeit of the spirit [conscience] hath printed there. Likewise it 
entereth into the body secretly, that it may pursue all its pursuers 
and divide them into parts. . . The fire separates the counterfeit of 
the spirit, fate, and the body into one portion, and the soul and the 
power [spirit] into another portion. The mystery of baptism 
remaineth in the middle of them, so that it may perpetually separate 
them, so that it may purge and cleanse them in order that they may 
not be polluted by matter. 

To show that baptismal regeneration early appeared 
among the speculative Ebionites, the following passages 
will suffice : 

If, therefore, any one be found smeared with sins and lusts as 
with pitch, the fire easily gets the mastery of him. But if the tow be 
not steeped in the pitch of sin, but in the water of purification and 
regeneration, the fire of the demons shall not be able to be kindled in 
it {Clementine "Recognitions" IX., 16). 

And this is the service he has appointed : To worship him only, 
and trust only in the Prophet of truth and to be baptized for the 
remission of sins, and thus by this pure baptism to be born again 
unto God by saving water {Clementine "Homilies," VII. , 8). 

With the passages from the heretical writers just quoted 
may be compared the following sentence from Cyprian 
(Ep. LXXVI.) : "For as scorpions and serpents, which 
prevail on the dry ground, when cast into water cannot 
prevail nor retain their venom ; so also the wicked spirits 



8 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

. . . cannot remain any longer in the body of a man in 
whom, baptized and sanctified, the Holy Spirit is begin- 
ning to dwell." 

Side by side with the idea of the efficacy of water 
baptism had grown up the conviction that apart from bap- 
tism there is no salvation. The human race being intrin- 
sically corrupt, the guilt of race-sin attaches to uncon- 
scious infants no less than to such as have reached 
moral consciousness. The only avenue of escape from 
the guilt of race-sin was baptism. Exception was made 
in the case of believers who suffered martyrdom before 
they had had an opportunity to wash away their sins in 
baptism ; but these were said to have had a baptism of 
blood. The necessity of baptism to salvation is implied 
in the passages above quoted, and this idea was devel- 
oped in its most extreme form among the Gnostics and 
the Ebionites. It is set forth in a striking way in the fol- 
lowing passages from the Clementine "Recognitions," 
VI., 8, 9, where Peter is represented as saying : 

And do you suppose that you can have hope toward God, even 
if you cultivate all piety and all righteousness, but do not receive 
baptism ? . . When you are regenerated and born again of water 
and of God, the frailty of your former birth which you have through 
men is cut off, and so at length you shall be able to attain salva- 
tion ; but otherwise it is impossible. . . Betake yourselves therefore 
to these waters, for they alone can quench the violence of the future 
fire ; and he who delays to approach to them, it is evident that the 
idol of unbelief remains in him, and by it he is prevented from has- 
tening to the waters that confer salvation. For whether you be 
righteous or unrighteous, baptism is necessary for you in every 
respect : for the righteous, that perfection may be accomplished in 
him and he may be born again to God ; for the unrighteous, that 
pardon may be vouchsafed him for the sins which he has committed 
in ignorance. 

When Christians had come to believe that water bap- 
tism possessed magical efficacy, and that all mankind 



RISE OF INFANT BAPTISM 9 

were so involved in sin that no salvation was possible 
apart from baptism, it was inevitable that infant baptism 
should be introduced. The widespread prevalence of 
infant lustrations among pagans made the introduction of 
infant baptism easy and natural. At first it would be 
confined to infants in danger of death ; but when the 
idea had taken firm hold on the Christian consciousness 
that it was a necessary means of securing cleansing from 
hereditary sin its progress could not fail to be rapid. 

The universal prevalence of infant baptism was long 
prevented, however, by another error, for whose eleva- 
tion to the position of a dogma Tertullian was chiefly 
responsible, but which had no doubt been more or less 
current since the middle of the second century. This 
error was, in effect, that mortal sins committed after 
baptism are irremissible. It was chiefly on this ground 
that Tertullian so earnestly insisted on the postponement 
of baptism until such a degree of maturity and stability 
should have been reached as to warrant the expectation 
that the candidate would be able to guard himself from 
the commission of mortal sins. He had no doubt what- 
ever as to the efficacy of baptism to cleanse the uncon- 
scious infant of hereditary sin ; but, on prudential 
grounds, he considered it important that this cleansing 
rite should be reserved until such time as he could have 
reasonable assurance that its efficacy would be perma- 
nent. From this time onward the choice between infant 
baptism and adult baptism was determined largely by 
the views of individuals as to whether the former or the 
latter would probably be the more advantageous. The 
baptized infant might on the one hand grow up and be- 
come involved in sin and so lose the opportunity that 
adult baptism would confer of starting out on his per- 
sonal Christian life with a clean score; on the other 
hand the unbaptized infant might die by violence or so 



10 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

unexpectedly as to be out of reach of the saving bath. 
The rigorous view of Tertullian as regards the unpar- 
donableness of post-baptismal mortal sin gradually gave 
place to a more benignant view and from the middle of 
the third century the church made so ample provision 
for the restoration of the lapsed, that infant baptism 
came to be generally regarded as the safer thing. 

The departure of the church of the second and third 
centuries from the apostolic standard was by no means 
confined to the matter of baptism. The same influences 
soon caused the Lord's Supper to be looked upon no 
longer as a memorial feast in which believers partook in 
a purely symbolical way of the broken body and the 
poured-out blood of their crucified, risen, and glorified 
Lord, but rather as a mystic ceremony to be celebrated 
with elaborate ritual. This change was likewise due to 
pagan influences brought to bear chiefly through the 
Gnostic sects. 

Other perversions of Christianity during the early 
centuries are so universally recognized by historians and 
so familiar to all readers of church history, that they 
need only be barely mentioned here. Sacerdotalism, 
a constant factor in pagan religious systems, soon in- 
truded itself into the Christian church. The ordinances 
having become mysteries must be administered by a 
ceremonially qualified priesthood ; and as the services 
became elaborate and each function must be performed 
by a properly qualified functionary, clerical gradations 
came to be multiplied and accurately differentiated. Out 
of the simple polity of the apostolic time, in accordance 
with which each congregation chose its own bishops or 
presbyters and deacons for the direction of the spiritual 
work of the body, the administration of discipline and 
the collection and distribution of charities, there was de- 
veloped, under the influences of the time, a system of 



SACERDOTALISM 1 1 

presidential administration in which the chief elder (or 
bishop) directed the affairs of the local church with the 
assistance and advice of a Board of presbyters. As the 
responsible head of the church he soon came to have 
chief control of the finances and such control tended to 
increase his relative importance. As Christian work 
spread from older centers the newly established congrega- 
tions were kept in relations of dependence on the mother 
church, or rather, as integral parts thereof. Thus the 
pastor of the central church would have the supervision of 
a greater or smaller number of outside congregations over 
each of which a presbyter of the central church came to 
preside. Thus arose diocesan episcopacy. At first this ar- 
rangement was adopted without any ambitious intentions 
on the part of the pastors as seemingly the most effective 
way of conducting Christian work. But as the dependent 
congregations became conscious of strength and their 
presbyter-pastors became restless under episcopal control, 
which in some cases was no doubt arbitrarily exercised, 
friction arose between bishops and presbyters. By this 
time (about the middle of the third century — the case of 
Cyprian and the Carthaginian presbyters is in point) the 
sacerdotal idea was pretty fully developed. Cyprian and 
those who were like-minded believed that ecclesiastical 
unity was absolutely essential and that schism was one of 
the greatest of evils. They went so far as to maintain 
that outside of the one ecclesiastical organization, whose 
center of unity was found in the episcopate, there is no 
salvation. By the strong opposition that the presbyters 
made to the assumption of authority on the part of the 
bishops the latter were led to assert the divine right and 
the irresponsibility of bishops. The same sense of the 
necessity of organic union and unity of administration 
afterward led to the centralization of authority in metro- 
politans and finally in the papacy. 



12 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

No less destructive of the spirit of primitive Christian- 
ity was the early intrusion of the doctrine of the meri- 
toriousness of external works. Jews and pagans alike 
attached great merit to almsgiving, fasting, and the fre- 
quent utterance of fixed forms of prayer. By the middle 
of the third century leading churchmen like Cyprian did 
not hesitate to teach that almsgiving is a means of se- 
curing the remission of sins and of purchasing an eternal 
inheritance. 

Asceticism also was imported into early Christianity 
from paganism. The disposition to regard the body as 
intrinsically evil and all natural impulses as worthy only 
of being trampled upon is a common feature of pagan 
religions. Fanatical seeking for martyrdom, excessive 
fasting, and the exaltation of virginity, were the earliest 
forms of Christian asceticism. It culminated in the 
brutalities of hermit life. It was chiefly through Gnosti- 
cism and Manichasism that ascetic ideas found entrance 
into the church, but these ideas were part and parcel of 
the spirit of the age and could not easily have been es- 
caped. That Christianity was sadly corrupted by the 
intrusion of this element all evangelical Christians main- 
tain. 

Superstition and idolatry were universally prevalent in 
ancient paganism as they are in modern. They pervaded 
and corrupted every department of life and occupied a 
most prominent place in the popular consciousness. 
That these elements are not eradicated once for all by 
conversion, but persist and sadly interfere with the full 
development of Christian character, the New Testament 
record illustrates and ancient history as well as modern 
experience fully confirms. In proportion as Christianity 
increased in popular influence and enjoyed immunity 
from persecution was the accession to the church of un- 
Christianized or imperfectly Christianized life. Not only 



SUPERSTITION AND IDOLATRY 1 3 

did the ordinances assume a pagan hue and sacerdotal and 
ascetic ideas become prevalent, but idolatrous practices 
corresponding in almost every detail with those of the 
surrounding heathenism came to be openly indulged in 
and regarded as Christian. The exaltation of saints and 
martyrs, the worship of images of Christ and the saints, 
the veneration of bones and other relics of the worthies 
of the past, pilgrimages to shrines and other holy places, 
vigils at the tombs of saints, the invocation of Mary the 
mother of Jesus as " the mother of God," the invocation 
of saints, belief in the efficacy of relics and shrines to 
cure diseases — these and many like superstitious prac- 
tices were countenanced by some of the ablest and holi- 
est of the Christian leaders of the fourth and following 
centuries, and by the fifth century had become well-nigh 
universal. 

The church that rejoiced in the patronage of Constan- 
tine and his successors, and that so readily assumed the 
position of an established religion, receiving its support 
from public taxation and persecuting paganism and her- 
esy, was evidently not the church of the apostles. 
It has been maintained' that the influence of pagan 
thought and life on Christianity was in general whole- 
some, inasmuch as it gave philosophical form to Christian 
doctrine and freed the church from the narrowness and 
exclusiveness that belonged to the apostolic age. It has 
been urged with considerable plausibility that the com- 
plete Christianization of Europe and the establishment of 
a Christian civilization was greatly hastened by the readi- 
ness with which Christianity absorbed pagan modes of 
thought and adapted itself to pagan ideas of life and of 
worship. Each of these positions certainly contains a 
modicum of truth. Circumstances being as they were 
we can scarcely conceive of Christianity as holding 
rigidly aloof from the influences of Jewish and pagan 



14 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

thought and life ; if such an attitude had been assumed 
the progress of Christianity must during the first few 
centuries have been slow indeed. As a matter of histor- 
ical fact great masses of men do not abandon at once the 
religious conceptions that constitute the inheritance of 
centuries. Departure from apostolic doctrine and prac- 
tice was gradual and unconscious, but none the less real 
and disastrous. 

Literature: Ante-Nicene Fathers (orig. or transl.) ; Pistis Sophia 
(Ethiopic with Lat. tr. by Petermann, extracts in Eng. in King, 
The Gnostics) ; The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (ed. by 
Schaff, Harnack, Hilgenfeld, etc.) ; Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, I. ; 
Works on Baptism and Infant Baptism by Wall, Gale, Caspari, 
Hoffmann, Hofling, and Ingham ; Stanley, Chr. Institutions ; Hatch, 
Hibbert and Bampton Lectures ; articles and sections on Baptism, 
the Supper, etc., in Smith's Diet, of Chr. Antiq., the Encyclopae- 
dias of Herzog-Plitt, Schaff-Herzog, Lichtenberger, and McClintock 
and Strong, and the Church Histories of Neander, Gieseler, Schaff, 
Moller, Muller, etc. 



CHAPTER II 

ANCIENT SECTS IN THEIR RELATION TO BAPTIST PRIN- 
CIPLES 

BUT, it may be asked, did the church as a whole suc- 
cumb to the corrupting influences to which it was 
subjected during the early centuries? Were there none 
that remained loyal to primitive Christianity among 
the tempted multitudes? Many Baptist writers have 
sought to find in the Montanists, Novatians, Donatists, 
Jovinianists, Vigilantians, Paulicians, Bogomiles, etc., 
who successively revolted from the dominant types of 
Christianity, faithful adherents to apostolic doctrine and 
practice and links in the chain of Baptist apostolic suc- 
cession. Let us test the claim of these parties to this 
honorable distinction. 

How stands the case with the Montanists ? They pro- 
tested most vigorously, it is true, against many of the 
paganizing corruptions into which the church of the 
latter part of the second century had fallen. They 
insisted most earnestly upon the rigid application of 
church discipline and upon the exclusion of all members 
whose lives fell short of a high moral and spiritual stand- 
ard. They showed themselves willing to suffer all 
manner of persecution on behalf of the truth as they 
understood it. They spent much time in fasting and 
prayer and were zealous in good works. But was their 
zeal according to knowledge? Was the spirit of Mon- 
tanism the spirit of apostolic Christianity ? Far from it. 
Judaistic and pagan legalism had made their influence 
felt even more powerfully upon this enthusiastic sect 
than upon the general church of the time. Their 

is 



16 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

religious enthusiasm was grounded in the erroneous be- 
lief that the end of the age was at hand. Supposing 
themselves to be the organs of a new revelation, which 
Christ had promised through the Paraclete, they felt 
themselves justified in disparaging the ethical teachings 
of the New Testament as having been accommodated to 
the ignorance and weakness of the apostolic times and in 
setting up in the name of the Paraclete a new and stricter 
code. The revelations that were supposed to come 
through their prophets were almost wholly directions for 
the establishment of a more rigorous morality than that 
of the New Testament. They claimed the authority of 
the Paraclete for making second marriages equivalent to 
adultery and hence mortal sin ; for rejecting entirely the 
use of wine and insisting on frequent and long-continued 
fasts ; for making flight in persecution or denial of the 
faith under any circumstances mortal sin ; and for ex- 
pecting the speedy end of the present dispensation. This 
rigid system was emphasized by their maintenance of the 
theory that mortal sins are unpardonable, absolutely so 
as far as the church is concerned. 

Montanistic prophecy, as far as appears, differed little 
from pagan manticism. By violent physical exertion, 
excessive fasting, and intense application of the mind 
to ethical and eschatological problems, these prophets 
wrought themselves up into an abnormal psychological 
state and gave utterance, in a more or less inco- 
herent manner, to the thoughts that had been fore- 
most in their minds. These morbid utterances were 
regarded by the Montanists as God's latest and high- 
est revelation. Their legalistic asceticism was radically 
opposed to the New Testament idea of the Christian life. 
Their arbitrary extension of the list of mortal sins and 
their unwarranted insistence that all mortal sins are 
unpardonable tended to drive to despair those who had 



MONTANISM AND NOVATIANISM 17 

fallen into sin and to cultivate in themselves a spirit of 
self-righteousness. Tertullian, the greatest of the Mon- 
tanists, was, as we have seen, among the most earnest 
maintainers of the saving efficacy of water baptism. 
Montanism, therefore, so far from being a return to prim- 
itive Christianity or an anticipation of the Baptist posi- 
tion, contained the germs of many of the worst errors of 
later Roman Catholicism. 

Equally remote from the spirit of primitive Christianity 
were the Novatians (A. D. 251 onward). Novatianism 
represents an earnest protest against the relaxation of 
discipline in the general church of the time ; but this 
protest was based upon the Montanistic view that mortal 
sins committed after baptism are absolutely unpardon- 
able so far as the church is concerned and on the Mon- 
tanistic extension of the list of mortal sins. A person 
who in the stress of persecution, even under torture, 
had momentarily yielded to the demands of his tor- 
mentors that he should deny the faith, or had been guilty 
of flight in persecution, or had in any other way com- 
promised himself in relation to the faith, had forfeited, 
from the Novatian point of view, once for all the right to 
a place and a name among God's people. He might 
repent in sackcloth and ashes, but so far as church priv- 
ileges were concerned it was of no avail. He was 
encouraged to hope that after a lifetime of penance he 
might finally be a recipient of divine grace ; but on earth 
he could never expect to regain his church-membership 
and privileges. There was need of a vigorous protest 
against the extreme laxity with which many churches 
were dealing with the lapsed. But the Novatians erred 
yet more grievously in refusing, on arbitrary and non- 
scriptural grounds, to restore to church fellowship the 
truly penitent. Novatians, like Montanists, were ex- 
treme believers in the magical efficacy of water baptism 



18 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

and in the necessity of baptism to the remission of sins. 
So great was the stress laid upon the ordinance by Nova- 
tian himself, that when he was lying ill and was not 
expected to recover he submitted to what was after- 
ward called clinic baptism, that is to say, he had water 
poured upon him while lying on his bed. This was one 
of the charges made against him by his Catholic oppo- 
nents, who doubted the validity of such baptism and 
maintained that after his recovery he should have been 
properly baptized. It is not easy to detect in Novatian- 
ism the notes of the apostolic church, or any very close 
relationship to the Baptist position. 

Almost identical with the position of the Novatians 
was that of the Donatists (A. D. 311 onward). As the 
Novatian schism grew out of the lapses that occurred in 
connection with the Decian persecution, so the Donatist 
schism grew out of the lapses occasioned by the Diocle- 
tian persecution. The immediate occasion of the Donat- 
ist schism was a supposed departure from Christian 
fidelity on the part of Mensurius, bishop of the Cartha- 
ginian church, and one of his deacons, Cascilian. The 
destruction of the Christian Scriptures was one of the 
chief aims of the persecutors. Mensurius and Caecilian 
were accused of having secreted the Scriptures belonging 
to the church and placing certain worthless heretical 
manuscripts in their place. The officers of the law were 
allowed, it was said, to take these worthless writings on 
the supposition that they were the Scriptures. Thus the 
bishop was enabled to save the Scriptures and his own 
life as well. The position of the strict party, that after- 
ward received the name Donatist from its most promi- 
nent leader, was, that such deceit was mortal sin and 
disqualified those guilty of it for the Christian ministry 
and even for church-membership. What they should 
have done, in the circumstances supposed, was to hide 



DONATISM 19 

the Scriptures and to suffer martyrdom rather than 
betray their place of concealment. The specific charge 
against Mensurius and Caecilian was persistently denied, 
and although an imperial commission was appointed to 
visit Carthage and to gather evidence on the question of 
fact no sure result was ever reached. On the death of 
Mensurius (A. D. 311), Caecilian, knowing that he would 
be strongly opposed by the strict party, got himself hur- 
riedly and irregularly ordained by a like-minded bishop. 
The opponents of Caecilian set up a rival bishop and the 
schism rapidly spread throughout Northern Africa and 
elsewhere. 

The Donatists added to the disciplinary code of the 
Montanists and Novatians the dogma that the validity 
of the ordinances, especially baptism, depends on the 
character of the administrator. Nay, the validity of the 
baptism of any individual was logically conditioned not 
merely on the uprightness of the person who baptized 
him, but upon an unbroken line of ceremonially and 
morally unblemished administrators of the ordinance 
back to the apostles. To have fellowship with Mensur- 
ius and Caecilian and their successors constituted one a 
traditor, and disqualified him for membership and minis- 
try in a Donatist church. The only way in which ad- 
mission could be secured was by renouncing the church 
that had made the cause of Mensurius and Caecilian its 
own and by being baptized anew into the Donatist fel- 
lowship. The Donatists seem to have laid even greater 
stress than did the Catholics of the time on infant bap- 
tism ; and so intense was their belief in the necessity of 
baptism to salvation that in their view Christ himself 
needed to be baptized in order to secure the remission of 
hereditary sin. Their demand for an unbroken line of 
worthy administrators of the ordinance was as unwar- 
ranted as it was impracticable, and tended to throw 



20 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPT1SM 

doubt on the validity of any individual case of baptism. 
As regards episcopacy, their practice seems to have been 
identical with that of their Catholic opponents. They 
may properly be called the high churchmen of the fourth 
and fifth centuries. That they were either apostolic or 
Baptist does not appear. 

The protest of Aerius (A. D. 355) in Pontus seems to 
have had a more evangelical basis. He claimed that the 
church had substituted the yoke of Jewish bondage for 
the liberty of the gospel. He insisted on Scriptural 
grounds upon the equality of presbyters and bishops. 
He protested against prayers for the dead, the celebration 
of the Lord's Supper as an offering for the dead, and 
ecclesiastical fasts. There is no evidence that he rejected 
infant baptism or baptismal regeneration, as from his gen- 
eral position he might have been expected to do. 

Somewhat similar in spirit was the protest of Jovinian 
(A. D. 385 onward), a Milanese monk, who came to see 
the evils of monasticism and who vigorously assailed 
various errors and abuses connected with current ascetic 
modes of thought. He denied the superiority of celi- 
bacy to married life ; maintained the equality in merit of 
virgins, widows, and married persons who have been 
once washed in Christ ; denied that those who with full 
faith have been born again in baptism can be subverted 
by the devil ; insisted upon the equality in point of merit 
of those who abstain from foods and those who partake 
of them with thanksgiving ; and maintained that for all 
truly regenerate persons there is one remuneration in the 
kingdom of heaven, all alike being saved by divine grace 
and not by merit, and all works of supererogation being 
thus impossible. He was strongly opposed to the vener- 
ation and intercession of the saints. He seems to have 
held, with the Christian writers of the second century, 
that the remission of sins takes place in connection with 



JOVINIAN AND VIGILANTIUS 21 

the baptismal act, faith and repentance having preceded. 
There is no evidence that he rejected infant baptism. 
He secured a large following, but was condemned by 
synods at Rome and Milan, and banished by the emperor 
Honorius. His persecuted followers seem to have taken 
refuge in the Alps, where they may have persisted until 
the Middle Ages. 

Equally evangelical was the protest of Vigilantius, a 
native of Southern Gaul and a protege of the celebrated 
Sulpicius Severus. About 394 he was sent by his patron 
on a visit to Paulinus of Nola, a highly educated and 
wealthy patrician, who had been led by the ascetic spirit 
of the time to devote his entire fortune to the relief of 
the poor and the maintenance of a monastery and 
church. These he had filled with relics and images and 
had adorned with the utmost splendor. Vigilantius was 
shocked by the introduction of so much of paganism into 
Christian worship. He afterward visited Jerome in his 
hermit cell at Bethlehem. The excesses of asceticism 
witnessed here called forth his earnest opposition. His 
antagonism to asceticism was intensified by a visit to 
Egypt where he came in contact with the swarms of 
monks and hermits that inhabited the Nitrian desert. 
He returned to Gaul and gained many adherents. Vigi- 
lantius condemned the undue exaltation of celibacy and 
virginity, the worship of images and relics, the invoca- 
tion of saints, vigils at the tombs of martyrs, etc., and 
insisted on a return to the simplicity of the gospel. The 
movement was lost in the invasion of the Alans and 
Vandals, but it is probable that the followers of Vigilan- 
tius, like those of Jovinian, took refuge in the Alpine 
valleys. There is no evidence that this reformer rejected 
infant baptism or baptismal regeneration. 

The best example of the persistence of a somewhat 
primitive type of Christianity is probably that of the 



22 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

ancient British church. During the fourth and fifth cen- 
turies British Christians seem to have held aloof in a 
measure from the paganizing influences in which the con- 
tinental church became involved. Diocesan episcopacy 
seems not to have existed. The study of the Scriptures 
was pursued with zeal in the numerous semi-monastic 
colleges for the training of pastors and missionaries. 
An extensive and successful missionary work was carried 
on in Ireland, Scotland, France, and Germany. Human 
authority in matters of religion was indignantly repu- 
diated. Humility and simplicity in Christian life were 
insisted upon and the pomp and worldliness of the Roman 
missionaries who sought (A. D. 598) to convert them 
proved highly offensive. British Christians were not only 
of a radically different spirit from the Romanists of the 
time, but were at variance with them as regards the time of 
celebrating Easter, the mode of baptism, tonsure, etc. 
An example of their missionary activity is the work of 
Patrick (432 onward), who evangelized more or less thor- 
oughly the whole of Ireland and left a reputation for 
sanctity of life and spiritual power that entitles him to 
be considered one of the greatest of missionaries. 
Equally noteworthy are the labors of Columba, an 
Irishman by birth and education, who, under circum- 
stances of great difficulty, succeeded (latter part of the 
sixth century) in planting evangelical churches through- 
out Scotland. Columbanus, another Irishman, is worthy 
of being placed by the side of Patrick and Columba. 
About 585, with thirteen companions, he made his way 
to Burgundy where he founded one after another three 
great mission stations that formed the centers of exten- 
sive evangelistic activity. His John-the-Baptist-like 
denunciation of the immoralities of the court and his res- 
olute refusal to abandon the peculiarities of the Irish 
church resulted in his banishment. With a body of 



EARLY BRITISH CHURCHES 23 

faithful companions he made his way up the Rhine to 
Switzerland where also he founded a number of mission 
stations. Driven hence by the malignity of his enemies 
he proceeded to Northern Italy where in his old age he 
formed yet another center of mission work. 

Notwithstanding the terrible persecutions to which 
they were subjected during the seventh and following 
centuries by the Saxon kings, at the instigation of the 
Roman Catholic Church, Christians of the ancient Brit- 
ish type are known to have maintained their existence in 
considerable numbers, especially in Wales and Scotland, 
until the eleventh century. It is probable that they 
were never completely destroyed and that they reap- 
peared in the Lollards of the fourteenth century. 

The mission work inaugurated by Columbanus was 
carried forward with great perseverance and success dur- 
ing the seventh and eighth centuries. By the middle of 
the eighth century the Iro-Scottish church was predom- 
inant throughout the Rhine valley, in Thuringia, and in 
Bavaria. In the entire South and West of Germany, 
before the coming of Boniface, the so-called apostle of 
the Germans, there existed (to quote the language 
of Ebrard) "a flourishing, well-organized, Rome-free 
church, whose only supreme authority was the Holy 
Scriptures, whose preaching was the word of the free 
redeeming grace of God." The same writer says : " A 
simple but well-organized church existed from the 
Pyrenees to the Scheldt, from Chur to Utrecht, whose 
only crime was that it did not recognize the Roman 
church as its supreme head ; hence also knew no new 
invocation of saints, no mass, no auricular confession 
and the like, and did not do homage to gross Pelagian- 
ism, but preached justification through faith." Forster, 
another learned German writer, characterizes the Iro- 
Scottish Christianity of the Continent as of "apostolic 



24 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

simplicity," as having "simple ceremonies" and ear- 
nest moral life, and as " recognizing the Scriptures as its 
completely sufficient norm." 

This party was crushed, but probably never utterly 
destroyed, by the united efforts of the hierarchy and the 
Frankish rulers ; yet its evangelical spirit doubtless sur- 
vived in the dissenting parties that appeared in the same 
regions during the mediaeval time. There is no sufficient 
evidence that the Iro-Scottish church rejected baptismal 
regeneration or infant baptism. 

The only reason for even mentioning the Paulicians in 
this connection is the fact that some Baptist writers have 
sought to represent them as essentially apostolic in doc- 
trine and practice. While recent investigations by Arme- 
nian scholars have seriously discredited the Greek 
accounts of this party, on which we have been almost 
wholly dependent, and have proved that such writers as 
Photius, Peter the Sicilian, and Zygadenus, have care- 
lessly or maliciously confounded the Paulicians with such 
disreputable parties as the Manichasans and the Messa- 
lians, the positive information that has thus far been 
brought to light is wholly inadequate to enable us to 
speak definitely about their evangelical character. The 
date of their rise in Armenia (about 660, according to the 
ordinary chronology) is itself a matter of uncertainty. 
That they were radically opposed to the dominant church, 
that they were violently iconoclastic, that they were 
ready to co-operate with Mohammedan invaders against 
their persecutors, that in the ninth century large num- 
bers of them were encouraged by the Eastern empire to 
settle in Bulgaria, where they served as a sort of border- 
guard between the empire and its northwestern enemies, 
that from this vantage-ground their principles extended 
throughout Europe, seem to be well-established facts. 
Whether they were originally dualistic and rejected the 



THE PAULICIANS 25 

Old Testament as the work of the Demiurge (world- 
framer), and rejected the ordinances of the New Testa- 
ment, or whether these features were limited to other 
parties with which they came into close contact and with 
which they might easily have been confounded, must 
remain undetermined for the present. That among the 
Oriental Christians who settled in Bulgaria and whose 
teachings spread over Western Europe there were many 
shades of opinion and practice from crass dualism and the 
practice of gross immorality to comparative purity in 
teaching and life seems highly probable, and the same 
degree of probability attaches to the supposition that the 
more evangelical as well as the less evangelical of the 
medieval European sects were due in some measure to 
these Oriental influences. 1 

What then are the results of this cursory survey of the 
first eight Christian centuries ? 

1. We have seen that error grappled with the infant 
religion in its very cradle and while it did not succeed in 
utterly strangling it Christianity did not escape the or- 
deal unscathed. This is generally acknowledged so far 
as Ebionitic (or Jewish-speculative) Christianity and 
Gnostic (or pagan-theosophical) Christianity is con- 
cerned. But some will no doubt question the assertion 



1 See Karapet Ter-Mkrttschian's "Die Paulikianer im Byzantinischen Kaiser- 
reiche und verwandte ketzerische Erscheinungen in Armenien," Leipzig, 1893. Kar- 
apet is an Armenian scholar, who has studied in the German universities and has 
had the advantage of access to Armenian literature, printed and manuscript, as well 
as to the Greek sources and modern German discussions. Unfortunately his results 
are chiefly negative ; but it is to be hoped that himself or some other will follow the 
lines of research marked out to more assured positive results. In the " Zeitschrift 
fur Kirchengeschichte" (October, 1895), Karapet has given an account of a modern 
Anti-pedobaptist party. He imparts in German an important catechetical work that 
was put forth by a leader of this party in 1782. This party Karapet insists on deriv- 
ing from the Thondrakians, who seem to have perpetuated in Armenia the old evan- 
gelical teaching that may have been represented in the earlier time by the Pauli- 
cians. This writing sets forth views as regards baptism, etc., almost identical with 
those of the Anti-pedobaptists of the sixteenth century. See summary of its contents 
in an article by the present writer in the Chicago " Standard " for May 16, 1896. 



26 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

that error invaded the very bosom of the church early in 
the second century. The error is often committed of re- 
garding the Gnostic and Ebionitic tendencies on the one 
hand and Catholic orthodoxy on the other as sharply 
defined and separate. The fact is, on the contrary, that 
the modes of thought that had their extreme develop- 
ment in Gnosticism and Ebionism were widely current 
during the early Christian centuries and the extent to 
which they were able to impress themselves upon this or 
that Christian individual or community depended on the 
degree to which Christian truth had been apprehended. 
Those who had been instructed by the apostles them- 
selves and those who had been brought up under strong 
Christian influences were in a position to resist Judaizing 
and paganizing influences to an extent impossible for 
others. Least of all could it be expected that men edu- 
cated in non-Christian philosophy and theosophy and to 
whom Christianity came as new wine into old bottles 
should at once become free from the domination of pagan 
thought. Many of the Christian teachers of the second 
and following centuries brought such non-Christian cul- 
ture with them and unconsciously were instrumental in 
working important changes in Christian modes of thought 
and life. Those whose training had been in the purer 
systems such as Stoicism and Platonism, or in eclectic 
systems in which the highest elements of pagan thought 
were embodied, influenced Christianity in a less objec- 
tionable way ; those who had been schooled in Oriental, 
Egyptian, and Pythagorean theosophy, could not fail to 
degrade Christianity almost to the level of the modes of 
thought that had mastered them. 1 

2. While we admire the zeal for pure membership, the 
fidelity to conviction, and the heroic self-denial of the 

J See Hatch's Hibbert Lectures on " The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon 
the Christian Church." 



GENERAL OBSERVATIONS 2^ 

schismatic parties of the early Christian centuries, we 
cannot fail to see in the church of Justin Martyr, of Iren- 
asus, of Cyprian, of Origen, of Eusebius, of Athanasius, 
of Chrysostom, and of Augustine, with all its errors and 
corruptions, more of the spirit of Christ and a nearer 
approach to apostolic doctrine and practice than in Mon- 
tanism, Novatianism, or Donatism. 

3. The case is different with the movements led by 
Aerius, Jovinian, and Vigilantius. Here we encounter 
for the first time radical opposition to the rapidly pro- 
gressive paganization of Christianity, based on a toler- 
ably correct apprehension of New Testament principles. 
These reformers seem to have distinctly rejected sacer- 
dotalism and asceticism, with the doctrine of the meri- 
toriousness of good works, and to have held fast to the 
doctrine of justification by faith. It is probable that if 
we knew more about them we should find their position 
even more completely in accord with New Testament 
Christianity than the meagre and hostile accounts that 
we have of them warrant us in asserting. But the cur- 
rent of paganizing influence was far too strong to be 
stayed by the protests of a few exceptionally enlight- 
ened spirits, and they seem to have made little impression 
on their time. 

4. So also in the ancient British church we have a 
distinctly purer and more primitive type of Christianity 
than that which prevailed during the fourth and following 
centuries in Southern and Eastern Europe and in Asia. 
This was no doubt due in part to the isolation of the 
British church from the corrupting influences of Greece 
and Rome, and in part to the prominence that was given 
to the study of the Bible and to the remarkable activity 
in mission work that for generations prevailed. 

5. Was there then a failure of the assurance of Christ 
that the gates of hades should not prevail against his 



28 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

church ? Far be it. We do not, it is true, find a succes- 
sion of organized churches in which Christian doctrines 
were maintained incorrupt. We are not able to prove 
that from the middle of the second century onward a 
single congregation could anywhere be found true in 
every particular to the apostolic norm. Nay, it is not 
possible to point to an individual Christian during the 
millennium that succeeded the apostolic age who appre- 
hended Christianity in a purely apostolic manner. But 
that there were hosts of true believers during the dark- 
est ages of Christian history can by no means be 
doubted. It is comforting to know that men may be in- 
volved in grievous errors as regards doctrine and practice 
and yet attain to a high standard of Christian living. 
That a church also may make grave departures in doc- 
trine and practice from the apostolic standard without 
ceasing to be a church of Christ, must be admitted, or 
else it must be maintained that during many centuries no 
church is known to have existed. In this admission 
there is no implication that an individual or a church may 
knowingly live in disobedience to Christ's precepts with- 
out grievous sin, or can ignorantly disobey without seri- 
ous spiritual loss. On the contrary, every departure, 
conscious or unconscious, from New Testament precept 
or example, not only involves loss as regards the particu- 
lar defection, but brings in its train other evils, which in 
turn bring others, until doctrine and practice become 
thoroughly corrupted. For example, Baptists have al- 
ways regarded infant baptism not simply as an unauthor- 
ized and useless innovation, but as involving a radical 
departure from the purpose of Christ in instituting the 
ordinance : supplanting believers' baptism, making the 
symbol antedate the thing symbolized, striking at the 
root of regenerate church-membership, tending to bring 
the entire population of a Christianized community into 



GENERAL OBSERVATIONS 29 

church fellowship, and making possible and fostering 
State-churchism. And so the consequences of any other 
radical departure from New Testament precept and ex- 
ample may be shown to be far-reaching and destructive. 

Literature : On Montanism : Bonwetsch, De Soyres, Neander 
(Antignosticus), Ritschl (D. Altkath. Kirche), Baur, Pressense. On 
Novatianism : Works of Cyprian, Novatian, Eusebius, and Socra- 
tes, O. Ritschl, Cyprian. On Donatism : Works of Augustine 
and Optatus, and the monographs of Volter, Seeck, and Deutsch. 
On Jovinianism and Vigilantianism : Jerome, Gilly, and Lindner. 
On Paulicianism : Photius, Peter Siculus, Zygadenus, Gieseler, 
Schmidt (Hist. Paul. Orientalium), Lombard (Les Paulic), Dbllinger 
(Sectengesch, I.), and Karapet. On all the parties treated, the per- 
tinent articles and sections in Smith's Diet, of Chr. Biog. and in 
the Encyclopaedias and Histories referred to in chapter I. 



CHAPTER III 

MEDI/EVAL ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM : THE PETROBRUSIANS AND 
THE ARNOLDISTS 

NOT until we reach the twelfth century do we en- 
counter Christian doctrine and practice that we 
can with confidence recognize as measurably conformable 
to the apostolic standard. During the eleventh century 
the dualistic heresies of the East made rapid progress in 
Western Europe, especially in Northern Italy and in 
Southern France. Like their prototypes in the East, the 
Cathari, as they were commonly called, were radical 
separatists and made uncompromising war on the corrup- 
tions and perversions of the dominant church. They not 
only repudiated with decision all the non-scriptural and 
anti-scriptural practices of the Catholics of the time, in- 
cluding the baptism of infants, but they rejected water 
baptism in general, substituting therefor a ceremony of 
their own called the Consolamentum. They were all 
dualists, some of them going to the Manicha^an extreme. 
Like the Manichasans they rejected marriage and all in- 
tercourse of the sexes, abstained from animal food, and 
in general practised a rigorous asceticism. 

In Peter de Bruys (1104-1124) and Henry of Lausanne 
(1116-1148) we have what seems to be an almost com- 
plete return to New Testament doctrine and practice. 
Our information about these reformers is derived wholly 
from their enemies, yet it is of such a nature that its 
authenticity can scarcely be called in question. Under 
what influence Peter, the French priest, came to his 
evangelical views we have no means of knowing. Being 
well educated and having access to the Scriptures, he 
30 



PETER AND HENRY 3 1 

may have been led by the zealous protests of the 
Cathari, who at this time abounded in Southern France, 
to examine the scriptural foundation of the doctrines and 
practices that were the special object of their attack : 
infant baptism, sacred buildings and shrines, the venera- 
tion of crosses, transubstantiation, sacrifices, prayers and 
almsgiving for the dead, liturgical services, etc. Peter 
the Venerable gives us a highly prejudiced but probably 
in the main correct account of the teaching and work of 
Peter de Bruys. Referring to the state of things that 
had resulted from Peter's activity in the regions to which 
his confutation was addressed, he says : " In your parts 
the people are rebaptized, the churches profaned, the 
altars overthrown, crosses burned, on the very day of 
our Lord's passion flesh is publicly eaten, priests are 
scourged, monks imprisoned and compelled by terrors 
and tortures to marry." He bears witness to the wide- 
spread acceptance of the views of Peter and the utter 
helplessness of priests and monks in the presence of his 
fiery zeal. " O miserable men, whoever you are," he 
writes, " who have yielded not to many nations but to two 
wretched little men only, Peter de Bruys and Henry, his 
pseudo-apostle." In his preface, written after Peter's 
death, he states somewhat fully five errors which, as he 
says, for twenty years have increased and multiplied. 
That we may be still further assured of the thoroughgoing 
evangelical position of Peter and Henry, we may quote 
from his statement : 

The first article of the heretics denies that children who have not 
reached the age of intelligence can be saved by baptism, nor (sic) 
that another person's faith can profit those who cannot use their 
own," since the Lord says : " Whosoever shall have believed and 
shall have been baptized shall be saved." . . The second article 
says that the building of temples or churches ought not to take 
place, that those already made, moreover, ought to be overthrown, 



32 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

nor that sacred places for prayer are necessary to Christians, since 
God when invoked hears as well in a tavern as in a church, in a 
market as in a temple, before an altar as before a manger, and 
hearkens to those who deserve it. The third article teaches that 
sacred crosses ought to be broken to pieces and burned up, because 
that kind of thing or instrument by which Christ was so frightfully 
tortured, so cruelly slain, is not worthy of adoration or veneration 
or any sort of supplication, but, by way of revenge for his torments 
and death, ought to be dishonored in every possible way, cut to 
pieces with swords and burned by fire. The fourth article denies 
not only the truth, that the body and blood of the Lord are daily 
and continuously through the sacrament offered in the church, but 
maintains that the sacrament is nothing at all, nor ought to be 
offered to God. The fifth article ridicules sacrifices, prayers, alms, 
and other good works done for dead believers by the living, and 
denies that these things can aid any one of the dead or in any 
manner. 

He further mentions that these heretics hold that God 
is mocked by ecclesiastical chanting because he who is 
delighted solely by pious affections cannot be called to 
one's aid by high-pitched sounds nor soothed by musical 
modulations. 

Peter's evangelistic activity extended from 1104 to 
1 124, when he was seized and burned on a pile of crosses 
that he was about to destroy. That he should have 
been able during so long a period to carry forward work 
so revolutionary is sufficient evidence that he had an 
immense following among the people, and that the nobil- 
ity were sympathetic. It is probable that many of the 
Cathari were led by his intelligent zeal to abandon their 
dualism and to accept his scriptural position. 

Henry of Lausanne, a Clugniac monk and deacon, 
began a similar career, probably under Peter's influence, 
about 1 1 16, and continued it until 1147. He was one of 
the most eloquent preachers of the Middle Ages. Public 
testimony was borne that " never had a man been known 
of so great strictness of life, so great humanity and 



PETER AND HENRY 33 

bravery " ; that " by his speech he could easily provoke 
even a heart of stone to compunction." Having been 
left in charge of the spiritual work of his diocese by the 
bishop of Mans, during a visit to Rome, he made a won- 
derful commotion in the community. We learn from the 
records of the diocese, that while he held services for 
the people, the clergy likewise sitting and weeping at his 
feet, he resounded in such an oracular manner as if 
legions of demons with one howl sounded forth a mur- 
mur from his mouth. Nevertheless in a wonderful man- 
ner he was eloquent. His speech infused through the 
ears, adhered to the people's minds like fresh poison. 
By which heresy the people were roused to fury against 
the clergy, so that their servants threatened them with 
tortures, nor were they willing to sell them anything or 
buy anything of them, nay, they held them as heathens 
and publicans. 

He induced immoral women publicly to burn their 
meretricious attire. He facilitated marriages by abolish- 
ing the requirement of a dowry ; so that many young 
men under his direction married those with whom they 
had been living unchastely. When the bishop returned 
from Rome the people cried out: " We wish none of 
your ways, none of your blessing. . . We have a father, 
we have a pontiff, we have an advocate who surpasses 
you in authority, honesty, and knowledge." Hildebert 
succeeded in banishing him, but not in withdrawing from 
him the affections of the people. From this time onward 
Henry seems to have co-operated fully with Peter de 
Bruys in the evangelistic work that had been inaugurated 
by the latter twelve years before. In 11 34 we find him 
laboring with great success in Provence, where he was 
seized by the Archbishop of Aries, and being sent for 
trial to the pope was convicted of heresy. Having been 
released, through what influence we are not informed, 



34 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

he continued his zealous labors. The passionate denun- 
ciations of the great Bernard furnish abundant evidence 
of his wonderful popularity and success. He was again 
thrown into prison through the influence of Bernard 
(1147), where he seems to have died about 1148. 

That Peter and Henry were not Cathari, as Dollinger 
has recently attempted to prove, is manifest : 1. From the 
zeal with which they promoted marriage, which was radi- 
cally contrary to the principles of the Cathari. 2. From 
the fact that they not only rejected infant baptism, but 
rebaptized on a profession of faith those who came into 
their fellowship. 3. From the absence of any indication 
that they practised themselves, or urged upon others, 
abstinence from animal food. 

The difficulty felt by Dollinger in accounting for their 
rise and for the sudden disappearance of their followers 
as a distinct sect, apart from the supposition that Peter 
and Henry were themselves Cathari and that their influ- 
ence persisted in the extensive Catharistic movement of 
the later time, is more imaginary than real. It is by no 
means certain that no evangelical life existed in Southern 
France before the appearance of Peter, and evidence of 
the persistence of evangelical life after the death of 
Henry abounds. 

Contemporary with Peter and Henry were two relig- 
ious enthusiasts, Tanchelm, who labored in the Nether- 
lands with great success from 11 15 to 1124, and Eudo de 
Stella, who closed a remarkable career in Breton in 1148. 
Both of these reformers denounced the Roman Catholic 
churches as dens of iniquity, and exhorted the people to 
abstain from receiving the sacrament at the hands of the 
corrupt priesthood. They are charged by their enemies 
with making extravagant statements as to their own 
sanctity and authority. Hugo, Archbishop of Rouen, 
writing in 1145 against the heretics of his locality, and 



ANTI-PEDOBAPTISTS AT COLOGNE 35 

probably having in mind Eudo and his followers, thus 
sets forth their views : 

The sacraments profit only the intelligent, not the ignorant ; they 
profit adults, they bestow nothing upon little children. These [here- 
tics] condemn the baptism of little children and infants and say, 
" In the gospel we read, Whosoever shall have believed and shall 
have been baptized shall be saved, but little children do not believe, 
therefore baptisms do not profit little children." Again : " If justifi- 
cation is of faith and salvation is of baptism, what does confirmation, 
made by the hand of a pontiff, add to those who believe and have 
been baptized, to those who are justified and saved? " 

Contemporaneously (1115 to 1146), a similar evangeli- 
cal movement was carried forward in the Rhenish prov- 
inces. In the former year several heretics, among them 
two presbyters, were apprehended in the neighborhood 
of Treves, who according to the records, denied " that 
the substance of the bread and the wine which is blessed 
at the altar through the priests is truly transmuted into 
the body and blood of Christ, nor did they say that the 
sacrament of baptism profits little children unto salvation, 
and very many erroneous things they professed, which I 
have thought it wrong to record." So numerous and 
aggressive had heretics become in these parts by 1146 
that Evervin, provost at Steinfeld, sent for Bernard, the 
great heresy-hunter of the Middle Ages, to aid him in 
suppressing them. Having described, in his letter to 
Bernard, the Cathari who abounded in the neighborhood 
of Cologne, Evervin proceeds to write of "certain other 
heretics in our land, absolutely discordant from these, 
through whose mutual discord and contention both have 
been detected by us. These latter deny that the body 
of Christ is made at the altar. . . Concerning the bap- 
tism of little children they have no faith, because of that 
passage in the gospel : Whosoever shall have believed 
and shall have been baptized shall be saved." He 



36 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

further represents them as rejecting all marriages except 
those in which both the contracting parties are virgins, as 
having no confidence in the suffrages of saints, as deny- 
ing that fasts and other bodily afflictions are profitable as 
regards the remission of sins either for the righteous or 
for sinners, as calling other ecclesiastical observances not 
founded by Christ or the apostles superstitions, as reject- 
ing the doctrine of purgatory, and maintaining that 
souls immediately after going forth from the body pass 
either into eternal rest or eternal punishment, and as 
repudiating prayers or offerings for the dead. Several 
clergymen and monks are said to have joined themselves 
to this party. 

Contemporary with these evangelical movements in 
France, Germany, and the Netherlands, was the remark- 
able career of Arnold of Brescia in Italy. Of noble 
lineage and great intellectual and moral powers, he 
studied under the famous French teacher and free- 
thinker Peter Abelard. It is highly probable that, while 
in France, he came in contact with the widespread evan- 
gelical work of Peter and Henry. On his return to Italy, 
full of zeal for the reformation of Church and State, he 
was admitted into one of the lower grades of the clergy. 
He had come to see in the secularization of the church 
and in the devotion of clergy and monks to the accumu- 
lation of wealth as means of luxury and oppression, the 
root of the corruptions of the time, and he was able to 
give all the greater emphasis to his scathing denuncia- 
tions by reason of his own austerity and sanctity of life. 
He demanded the complete renunciation, on the part of 
the church as a whole and of individual clergy and 
monks, of all property and entire withdrawal from all 
secular affairs. He insisted that the clergy should be 
supported entirely by the freewill offerings of the peo- 
ple. His views met with great favor throughout all 



ARNOLD OF BRESCIA 37 

Northern Italy, but having been accused of heresy by 
his bishop in a Lateran synod he was obliged to leave 
Italy in 1 1 39. He returned to France, where he defended 
Abelard against Bernard and others, and soon had this 
fierce and unrelenting heresy-hunter dogging his foot- 
steps. He next went to Switzerland where he labored 
with acceptance under the protection of the Bishop of 
Constance until the zeal of Bernard, who warned the 
bishop not to harbor this "roaring lion," wrought his 
expulsion. He found protection with a papal legate who 
afterward became Pope Celestin II., and in Rome dur- 
ing a decade he was at the head of a popular movement 
that aimed at the restoration of the ancient form of gov- 
ernment and that gained such power as to be able to 
expel the pope and to establish a new regime. In the 
treaty between Frederick Barbarossa and Alexander III. 
(11 5 5), he was basely sacrificed by the former to the 
latter. He was hanged, his body was burned and his 
ashes were cast into the Tiber, lest his followers should 
gather his remains for relics. 

The foregoing are well-established facts. The ques- 
tions about which there has been difference of opinion 
are the following : Was Arnold a religious schismatic 
as well as a social and political reformer? We should 
attach very little importance to Bernard's railings if we 
had no better evidence to rely upon. Otto, of Freising, 
one of the best informed and most judicial of the con- 
temporary authorities, remarks that, ■' Besides these 
things, he is said to have been astray with reference to 
the sacrament of the altar and the baptism of infants." 
The former part of this statement is confirmed by sev- 
eral writers. The latter part has commonly been sup- 
posed to be unconfirmed. It has recently been claimed 
by Breyer, a learned German writer, who has studied the 
career of Arnold with great care, that Durandus confirms 



38 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Otto's report as to Arnold's unsatisfactory views on 
infant baptism. The passage from Durandus refers not 
to Arnold personally but rather to his followers and is 
not a direct assertion that these rejected infant baptism. 
It is as follows: "The Arnoldists assert that never 
through water baptism do men receive the Holy Spirit, 
nor did the baptized Samaritans receive it, until they 
received the imposition of hands." This passage can be 
fairly taken to prove no more than that the Arnoldists 
denied that the Holy Spirit is received in baptism. 

Did Arnold found a sect ? We have abundant evidence 
that he did. It is related by Johannes Saresberensis in 
his " Historia Pontificalis," that during his stay in Rome 
Arnold "founded a sect of men which is still (about 
1 164) called the heresy of the Lombards," and that its 
adherents on account of the uprightness, rigor, and piety 
of their lives have found most enthusiastic popular sup- 
port. Johannes was resident in Rome during Arnold's 
time and must have known whereof he affirmed. 

The next question to be settled is, Whether he was 
founder of the sect known during the succeeding century 
as Arnoldists ? Those who accept the evidence that 
Arnold founded a sect, can hardly fail to regard it as 
highly probable that the Arnoldists of history derived 
from him alike their impulse and their name. The fact 
that the Arnoldists centered in Lombardy, where Arnold's 
influence is known to have been greatest, is, moreover, 
strongly favorable to this identification. 

They were at one with the Petrobrusians in their 
uncompromising hostility to the Roman Catholic Church, 
whose sacraments they repudiated. They denied the 
efficacy of water baptism to procure the remission of sins 
and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and laid considerable 
stress upon the imposition of hands as a complementary 
rite. 



ARNOLD OF BRESCIA 39 

During the latter part of the century they seem to 
have united with a party of the Humiliati, a semi-monastic 
religious and industrial community. By 1184 some 
sort of union had been established in Lombardy between 
these Arnoldistic Humiliati and the Poor Men of Lyons, 
or followers of Peter Waldo; for Pope Lucius III. (1184), 
in a bull against the heresies prevailing in Lombardy, 
mentioned the Humiliati and the Poor Men of Lyons as if 
they were one and the same party. 

Literature : On the Cathari : Dollinger (Sectengesch.) and Schmidt 
(Hist. d. Cathares). On Peter de Bruys and Henry of Lausanne: 
Peter the Venerable, Bernard, and Dollinger. On Arnold of Bres- 
cia : Otto Frising, Durandus, Bernard, Giesebrecht, Breyer, and 
Hausrath. On all the topics of the chapter the pertinent articles and 
sections in the Encyclopaedias and Histories referred to in chapter I. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE WALDENSES AND RELATED PARTIES 

THE simple and familiar story of Peter Waldo, the 
prosperous Lyonese merchant who about 1173 gave 
up property and home in order to devote himself to evan- 
gelistic work, need not be here recounted. The idea of 
founding a sect seems to have been as remote as possible 
from his thoughts. He simply claimed for himself and 
his followers the right to evangelize as laymen. The 
denial of this right by the ecclesiastical authorities drew 
forth an expression of the determination of the evangelists 
to obey God rather than men. This placed them in the 
position of schismatics. Persecution only served to 
heighten their zeal and to extend the sphere of their 
labors. Early in his career Waldo secured the transla- 
tion into the vernacular of portions of the Scriptures. 
These were mastered by himself and a body of faithful 
followers and formed the basis of their enthusiastic proc- 
lamation of the gospel and of their denunciation of pre- 
vailing corruptions in the dominant church. 

Two errors have widely prevailed regarding Waldo's 
relation to earlier evangelical life : that of the Waldenses 
themselves, followed by many Mennonites and some 
Baptists, in accordance with which Waldo was in no 
proper sense the founder of the party that bears his name 
but simply attained to the leadership of an evangelical 
party that had continuously existed from apostolic times ; 
the other, represented by such modern scholars as Karl 
Miiller, which denies any sort of historical connection 
between Waldo and earlier evangelical life and which 
minimizes the evangelical character of the party. 
40 



POOR MEN OF LOMBARDY 4 1 

The theory of Waldensian apostolic succession cannot 
be sustained by historical facts ; but that Waldo had 
been influenced directly or indirectly by the Petrobrusian 
movement, which a few years before had profoundly 
stirred the religious life of Southern France and which 
must have persisted in some measure to his own time, 
seems highly probable. That the vigorous and aggressive 
party led by Waldo soon absorbed much of the evangel- 
ical life of the earlier types and was thereby itself made 
more evangelical can scarcely be doubted. 

It must be admitted that Waldo and his early followers 
had more in common with modern Methodists than with 
modern Baptists and more in common with Roman Ca- 
tholicism than with any evangelical party. His views 
of religious life and doctrine were scarcely in advance of 
those of many earnest Catholics of the time. He depre- 
cated schism, but his evangelical zeal did not permit him 
to regulate his work by the will of his ecclesiastical su- 
periors. Refused permission to carry on his work as a 
Catholic he must at all events carry it on. 

An alliance was formed, as early as 1184, between the 
Poor Men of Lyons, as Waldo's followers were called, 
and the Poor Men of Lombardy, who were probably iden- 
tical with the Arnoldistic Humiliati. The union was dis- 
solved as early as 1205, owing, it would seem, to pro- 
nounced differences of opinion between the parties and 
Waldo's uncompromising attitude. In 1218, shortly after 
Waldo's death, a conference was held at Bergamo in 
Northern Italy, where the points at issue were fully dis- 
cussed, but no harmonization was effected. After further 
correspondence the Poor Men of Lombardy (about 1230) 
wrote what may be called an ultimatum, in which the 
difficulties and the negotiations of the past are fully re- 
viewed and the points still at issue sharply set forth. 

This recently discovered Rescript is the oldest Walden- 



42 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

sian document known and must be regarded as containing 
an authentic account of the views of the two parties. 
They were agreed as regards the necessity of water bap- 
tism to salvation even in the case of infants, and in hold- 
ing to the doctrine of transubstantiation ; but they 
differed as to whether the transmutation of the elements 
is due to the utterance of the divine words of consecra- 
tion, so that a Jew or a harlot can effect it, or whether the 
power to transmute depends on the personal character of 
the ministrant. The Italians insisted on the latter view, 
the Ultramontanes on the former. Both maintained that 
baptism could be validly administered in an emergency 
by a harlot, and the Ultramontanes insisted on applying 
the same principle to the Supper. The Ultramontanes 
felt perfectly free to receive the Supper at the hands of 
the corrupt priests and to have their infants baptized by 
them. Waldo had persistently refused to consent to the 
appointment during his own lifetime or afterward of 
bishops or general superintendents, just as Wesley 
strenuously opposed the introduction of the episcopate 
into his society. The Italians preferred, it appears, to 
appoint superintendents for life, the Ultramontanes for 
a limited period. They had differed also as to whether 
ministers should be ordained for life or for a limited period, 
the Italians preferring the former arrangement, the Ultra- 
montanes the latter. In this also they were able to reach 
a satisfactory adjustment. Waldo had resolutely opposed 
the Italian " congregations of workmen," probably a per- 
petuation of the semi-monastic working societies of the 
Arnoldistic Humiliati mentioned above. The grounds of 
his opposition were no doubt the incongruity of this mode 
of life with devotion to evangelistic work, on which he 
laid great stress, and the grave abuses that usually grew 
up in organizations of this kind. The Italians were 
willing as far as possible to reform abuses, but did not 



WALDENSIAN PRINCIPLES 43 

see their way clear to the abolition of the congregations. 
On this matter also conciliation had been reached. 

The most obstinate point of difference with which they 
had to deal was that with regard to the post-mortem con- 
dition of Waldo and of Vivetus, one of his chief co- 
laborers. The Ultramontanes made it an indispensable 
condition of the restoration of fellowship, that the Italians 
should acknowledge without qualification that these 
worthies "are in God's paradise." The Italians would 
go no further than to say, that "If before their death 
Waldo and Vivetus satisfied God for all their faults and 
offenses, they could be saved." These faults and of- 
fenses doubtless indicate the Italians' view of the proce- 
dures of Waldo and Vivetus that led to the schism. The 
probability is, that the Italians had used strong language 
reflecting on the Christian character of these leaders, im- 
plying doubt as to their saved condition. Loyalty to the 
founder of their society and to his honored associate re- 
quired that such language should be withdrawn before 
communion could be re-established. 

It is probable that Waldo and his immediate followers 
held to the set of views that soon became characteristic 
of the Waldenses, and were communicated by them to 
the Bohemian Brethren, and by both these parties to the 
Anabaptists of the sixteenth century. They were cer- 
tainly held by the Waldenses in 1235. 1 These views 
were common, for the most part, to the Cathari and to 
the evangelical parties of the Middle Ages and their per- 
sistence in the Anabaptists is one of the most convincing 
proofs of the historical connection of the latter with 
mediaeval evangelical life. On this account, and not be- 
cause these views are distinctively Baptist, it seems im- 
portant to give some account of them here. 

While the Waldenses laid little stress on dogmatic 

1 See the " Supra Stella " of Salve Burce, in Dollinger, Vol. II., p. 52., seq. 



44 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

statements, their theology was evidently strongly anti- 
Augustinian. They emphasized the imitation of Christ. 
The Sermon on the Mount was their favorite portion of 
Scripture. They might fairly be charged with over- 
emphasizing good works as compared with faith. From 
their literalistic interpretation of the words of Christ, they 
unconditionally rejected oaths, capital punishment, magis- 
tracy, and warfare. On the ground of Christ's words, 
they taught and practised non-resistance ; yet in dire 
emergencies human nature sometimes reasserted itself 
and they repelled persecution with the utmost vigor and 
determination. 

The Waldenses soon extended their work throughout 
Europe. Especially active and successful were they in 
Southern Germany and in the southwestern provinces of 
Austria. The perpetual conflict between popes and em- 
perors from the middle of the twelfth to the middle of 
the fourteenth century and the degradation and schism 
of the papacy during the latter part of the fourteenth 
and the first half of the fifteenth centuries was highly 
favorable to their spread. Not that they had immunity 
from persecution. On the contrary most of the infor- 
mation as to the extent and character of their work 
we owe to the careful records of inquisitors. But they 
found such acceptance with the masses of the people, 
had effected an organization for secret work so complete, 
and had attained to such skill in evading persecution, 
that they were often able to carry forward their work 
with considerable vigor and success in the very face of 
the Inquisition. They had a three-fold ministry : 
"majors," ordained when practicable by another 
"major," otherwise by a presbyter or presbyters ; "pres- 
byters," who devoted themselves exclusively to evangel- 
istic and pastoral work under the direction of the 
major; and "deacons," whose chief duty it was to pro- 



WALDENSIAN ORGANIZATION 45 

vide for the support of majors and presbyters, but 
who also engaged largely in spiritual work. All three of 
these orders of ministry belonged to the inner circle of 
the society, to which admission could be secured only 
after a long period of training and testing. The outer 
circle were called "friends" or " believers," and from 
these were derived the funds for the support of the work. 
Hospices, presided over by elderly women, were main- 
tained in the various communities in which they labored, 
where the itinerant ministers were entertained, and 
where devotional and educational work was conducted. 
Delegates from the inner circle met annually in conven- 
tion, usually in Lombardy, where they brought together 
the funds collected for the maintenance of the work, 
appointed majors and presbyters when vacancies ex- 
isted, planned the work of the ensuing year, and appor- 
tioned to the workers funds for their support. 

It is gratifying to know that the Waldenses did not 
long remain in the semi-Romanist position in which we 
left them about 1230. From the "Supra Stella" of 
Salve Burce, an Italian writing of the year 1235, we get 
a far more favorable view of the evangelical character 
of the Poor Men of Lyons and the Poor Men of Lom- 
bardy than from the Rescript. They are represented 
as denouncing the Roman Church as a " foul harlot " and 
"beast," as a "serpent's nest," and yet as receiving 
from it "baptism and the imposition of hands." 1 

The next detailed accounts we have of them were 
written about thirty years later by their enemies. These 
inquisitorial documents show that by 1260 the Waldenses 
had emerged from the condition in which they saw men 
as trees walking into the light and liberty of the gospel. 

For the purpose of exhibiting the Waldenses in this 
more favorable light we select the accounts of David of 

Zollinger, Vol. II., pp. 62-64. 



46 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Augsburg and of the so-called " Passau Anonymous." 
According to the former writer, " their first heresy " was 

contempt of ecclesiastical power. . . Having been cast out from the 
Catholic Church they affirm that they alone are the church of Christ 
and disciples of Christ. They say that they are successors of the 
apostles and have apostolic authority and the keys of binding and 
loosing. They say that the Roman Church is the Babylonish harlot, 
and that all who obey her are damned. They say that all the saints 
and the faithful since the time of Pope Sylvester have been damned. 
They say that no miracles that take place in the church are true. . . 
They say that no statutes of the church after the ascension of Christ 
are to be observed, or are of any value. The festivals, fast-days, 
orders, benedictions, and offices of the church they absolutely re- 
pudiate. They say that then for the first time is a man truly bap- 
tized when he has been inducted into their heresy. But some say 
that baptism does not avail for little children because they cannot 
yet actually believe. The sacrament of confirmation they repudiate, 
but their own masters lay their hands upon their disciples in place of 
that sacrament. They say that the bishops and clergy and monks 
of the church are scribes and Pharisees, persecutors of the apostles. 
They do not believe that the body and blood of Christ are truly 
present [in the Supper], but only bread that has been blessed, which 
by a certain figure of speech is called the body of Christ. . . But 
some say that the ordinance is validly administered only by good 
men, but others, by all who know the words of consecration. . . 
They say also, that a priest who is a sinner cannot bind and loose 
any one, since he himself has been bound by sin, and that any good 
and intelligent layman can absolve another and impose penance. . . 
They repudiate all clerical orders, saying that they would be rather a 
curse than a sacrament. . . They say that every oath is unlawful 
and mortal sin even if it be concerning what is true. . . They say 
that it is not lawful to put to death malefactors through secular judg- 
ment. . . They say that there is no purgatory, but that all on dying 
pass immediately into heaven or hell ; therefore they assert that suf- 
frages for the dead made by the church are of no profit, since in 
heaven they do not need them and in hell they are in no way 
aided by them. . . They say also that the saints in heaven do riot 
hear the prayers of the faithful. . . On festal days where thev 
cautiously can thev labor, arguing that since it is good to labor it 
is not evil to do good things on a festal day. In Lent and on 
other fast-days of the church they do not fast, but eat flesh where 



WALDENSIANISM IN 1260 47 

they dare, saying that God takes no delight in the afflictions of his 
friends. 

Elsewhere David of Augsburg bears testimony to their 
great devotion to the study of the Scriptures, by freely 
quoting which they were able to impress the people and 
to put the clergy at a disadvantage. The outward sanc- 
tity of their lives he freely acknowledges and accounts 
thereby for their strong popular influence. Their zealous 
and effective efforts for the salvation of men are de- 
scribed by the author in a way that reflects credit on 
the Waldenses. 

The " Passau Anonymous," describing the Austrian 
Waldenses, of whom forty-two distinct communities are 
mentioned, conveys substantially the same impression as 
to their thoroughgoing evangelical character and their 
zeal in Christian work : " In relation to baptism some err 
in that they maintain that little children are not saved 
through baptism, since the Lord says : Whosoever believ- 
eth and is baptized shall be saved." He adds: "Some 
baptize anew, others practise laying on of hands instead 
of baptism." This writer accounts for the rapid spread 
of heresy by candid admission of the corruptions in doc- 
trine and practice that prevailed in the church and ren- 
dered it almost defenseless in the face of such attacks. 

Rainerius Sacco, writing of the Poor Men of Lombardy 
(about 1260), after some remarks on the strong anti- 
Romanist attitude of the party, says : " Likewise they 
say that infants are saved without baptism." 

In the " Summa de Heresibus " (Dollinger, Vol. II., p. 
297) it is said of the Runcarians, a sect of the Waldenses : 
" Concerning baptism they say that a wicked priest does 
not baptize but rather pollutes. . . Whence they teach 
that all their own ought to be baptized, and that they had 
not been baptized but rather polluted" in the Roman 
Church. 



48 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Literature : Monographs of Preger, Haupt, Keller, Comba, K. 
Muller, Wattenbach, Herzog, and Dieckhoff, as in the Bibliography. 
Dollinger, Sectengesch., II., gives most of the important documents. 
Gieseler, Ch. Hist., II., 531 seq., gives a large amount of carefully 
selected extracts from mediaeval works. Bern. Guidonis, Practica 
Inquisitionis contains much important matter. 



CHAPTER V 

THE TABORITES AND THE BOHEMIAN BRETHREN 

THE Taborites appeared as the radical evangelicals 
in connection with the Hussite movement in Bo- 
hemia — first half of the fifteenth century — and were a 
product in part of Wycliffite and in part of Waldensian 
influence. Preger, Haupt, Goll, and a number of other 
high authorities on mediaeval religious history, lay chief 
stress on the Waldensian element and find in the records 
of the Bohemian Inquisition of the fourteenth century 
abundant evidence of the presence and aggressive activity 
of a radical type of Waldensianism in regions where Tabor- 
ism afterward abounded. Loserth and others, having 
established the fact that Huss and Jerome of Prague were 
deeply indebted to Wy cliff e and that through their influ- 
ence Wycliffe's teachings were widely diffused throughout 
Bohemia, feel that there is no need to suppose that Wal- 
densianism exerted any important influence on the move- 
ment. The fact would seem to be that Bohemian religious 
life had been profoundly affected by the old-evangelical 
teaching in its various forms long before the time of Wyc- 
liffe ; but that the clear and profuse utterances of the 
great English reformer were brought powerfully to bear 
through Huss and the University of Prague and gave a 
mighty impulse to evangelical thought and life. 

The Taborites were if possible more pronounced than 
the most evangelical of the Waldenses in their insistence 
on the absoluteness and the exclusiveness of scriptural 
authority and in applying the Scripture touchstone to 
every doctrine and practice. They said : 

D 40 



50 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Christ Jesus is our only truly good and perfect lawgiver. . . The 
law of Jesus Christ, i. e., the gospel law, which surpasses the Old 
Testament as all other laws in brevity, simplicity, and ease of fulfill- 
ment, is of itself alone sufficient for the government of the church 
militant and man needs no new law for his pilgrimage to the home 
above. . . Only those truths are to be believed and accepted that are 
designated in the canonical Scriptures and can be derived from these 
directly and without the employment of far-fetched methods of inter- 
pretation. . . Only such ceremonies and external forms in worship 
are to be employed as Christ himself has approved. 

Baptismal regeneration and the real presence in the 
Supper were explicitly denied. No mediaeval party 
came nearer to the Baptist position than the Taborites 
in their conception of the relation of Scripture to doc- 
trine and practice. But they failed to see the incon- 
sistency of infant baptism with the position they had 
taken and perpetuated this non-scriptural practice. 
Aroused to fanatical zeal by persecution, many of them 
took refuge in chiliastic views, as did some of the Ana- 
baptists of the Reformation time. There is a historical 
connection between the chiliasm of the Taborites and 
that of the fanatical Anabaptists. 

In Peter Chelcicky of Bohemia, the spiritual father of 
the Bohemian Brethren and one of the ablest Christian 
thinkers of the fifteenth century, we have a near approach 
to the position of the Anti-pedobaptists of the sixteenth 
century. Like the Waldenses and the Taborites he re- 
jected transubstantiation and baptismal regeneration, and 
sought to make the New Testament the only standard of 
faith and practice. According to Chelcicky, the only 
source of faith is the will of God, which is set forth 
authoritatively and exhaustively once for all through the 
apostles in their writings and in the church founded by 
them. He regarded the apostolic church as the model. 
Any deviation from this model is apostasy, whether it be 
by way of addition or diminution. God's law is perfectly 



PETER CHELCICKY 51 

sufficient in every particular. Apostasy began when the 
relation of Church and State changed. If the whole pop- 
ulation of a State were Christian, there would be no 
need of civil government. An insoluble contradiction is 
involved in the expression "the Christian State," since 
to the essence of the State belongs compulsion by way of 
protecting and rewarding the good and punishing the 
evil. The true Christian needs not to be compelled to the 
good and dares not compel others, since God desires 
purely voluntary good. The punishment of evil-doers 
that the State administers is vengeance, which Chris- 
tians are forbidden to practice. Referring to Augustine's 
efforts to reconcile Christianity and the State, he says 
that he sucked blood instead of milk from the Scriptures. 
In the Christian State and in Christian society, as they 
have existed since the time of Constantine, there is no 
place for the true Christian except in the lowest ranks, 
which only obey without commanding, which serve with- 
out dominating. All dominion, all class distinctions, are 
radically opposed to Christ's requirement of brotherly 
equality. No one can be at the same time a king and a 
true Christian. For similar reasons Christians cannot 
safely or consistently occupy any civil office. So also 
Christians should avoid trade, because of the deceit in- 
volved in seeking advantages. He regarded cities where 
trade is carried on as vessels of poison in which true 
Christians cannot possibly escape the contamination of the 
world. Agriculture and handicraft seemed to him the 
only safe occupations for Christians. He lays great stress 
on the imitation of Christ, whom he regards as not only 
teacher and exemplar but also as Saviour and the only 
mediator between Creator and creature. The human 
will has remained free even after the fall. Good and evil 
stand before man, let him choose. Only the freely chosen 
good is truly good and valuable. Yet man does not attain 



52 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

to this choice without God's help. Inner regeneration can- 
not take place without God's grace. Such regeneration 
gives to man a new heart, a new understanding, new 
thoughts, new works. Right faith leads man to activity 
and works that assure him of the eternal reward. Like 
the Waldenses he rejected oaths and capital punishment 
with great decision. As regards baptism, after quoting 
the Great Commission, he proceeds : 

Open and clear is the word of the Son of God : first he speaks of 
faith, then of baptism . . . and since we find this doctrine in the 
gospel we should now also hold fast to it. But the priests err griev- 
ously in baptizing the great mass, and no one is found whether old 
or young who knows God and believes his Scripture, and this is evi- 
dent in their works . . . nevertheless all without discrimination are 
baptized and receive the body and blood of Christ. . . But we should 
rather hold fast to the view that baptism belongs to those who know 
God and believe his Scripture. 

If he had stopped here Baptists would have little fault 
to find with him. Unfortunately and inconsistently he 

adds : 

If such have children baptism should be bestowed upon their 
children in their conscience. But why is baptism bestowed before the 
other sacraments? Because the transgression which rests upon all 
men is hereditary sin ; and this is of such kind that it robs the soul 
of the life of grace and of the truth of all virtues and inclines it to all 
sorts of sins. . . Baptism is the second birth in the Holy Spirit. 

While he rejects transubstantiation, he falls short of 
the Taborite view of the purely symbolical character of 
the Supper. His position may be characterized, with 
reference to the later Reformation systems, as Calvin- 
istic rather than Zwinglian or Lutheran. 

The Bohemian Brethren (Unitas Fratrum), who arose 
shortly after the Hussite wars and rapidly absorbed the 
more evangelical elements of the Hussite movement, 
carried into practice to a considerable extent the views 



THE BOHEMIAN BRETHREN 53 

of Peter Chelcicky and were also considerably influenced 
by the Waldenses. Their first act after the completion 
of their organization (1467) was the rebaptism of all who 
were present. It is difficult to determine the extent to 
which infant baptism was rejected and adult baptism re- 
quired, as the accounts that have come down to us are 
more or less contradictory. But as the society became 
widespread it is reasonable to suppose that their practice 
became diversified in response to the varying influences 
by which they were surrounded. In 1503 and 1504, 
with a view to warding off impending persecution, the 
Bohemian Brethren — they now call themselves Wal- 
denses — addressed an " Apology " and two " Confessions 
of Faith " to King Wladislaus, in which they seek to mini- 
mize the extent of their departure from the Catholic 
Church. While admitting that in times past some of 
their society have rejected infant baptism they are now 
prepared to affirm that " Baptism is to be administered 
to children also, in order that guided by their sponsors 
they may be incited and accustomed to a life of faith." 
They still practised rebaptism in the case of those coming 
to them from the Roman Church. 

That they continued this latter practice until 15 19 is 
attested by Kostelechius, a Bohemian correspondent of 
Erasmus, 1 who in describing to Erasmus the religious 
condition of Bohemia mentions the Brethren (whom he 
calls Pickards) as the third sect. Having set forth in a 
clear but unfriendly light the decidedly evangelical char- 
acter of these Christians he proceeds: "Those who 
come to their heresy are each compelled to be rebap- 
tized." 

In a comparative account of the Bohemian and Mora- 
vian Pickards, written in 1535, 2 we find the following 
concise description : 

1 " Erasmi Ep." Lib. XIV., Ep. 20. "- Dbllinger, Vol. II., p. 635. 



54 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

The Bohemian Pickards rebaptize all those who come anew to 
themselves and their sect, before they are admitted ; but those who 
have given their profession to his royal Majesty, being, as far as can 
be conjectured, from Moravia, say, that this custom of rebaptizing 
formerly prevailed among them, but now they have learned that that 
mode of rebaptizing ought neither to be held to nor practised. . . 
The Bohemian Pickards say that the priests of the Roman Church 
err exceedingly concerning the baptism of children. 

From another document on the errors of the Pickards 
we learn : " Some baptize children, but many do not." 
After giving in some detail their views on a number of 
points, the writer draws this conclusion : "To sum up, 
almost all the articles of the Anabaptists have place in 
the synagogue of the Waldenses." 1 

That the Bohemian Brethren and the Waldenses aban- 
doned their opposition to infant baptism and their practice 
of rebaptism was due in part to the fact that large num- 
bers of their more radical members were being absorbed 
by the aggressive Anabaptists, and in part to the greatly 
increased danger and odium that attached to the Anabap- 
tist name. Decisive action in this direction resulted from 
the rigorous decree of the Bohemian Diet (1534) for the 
arrest and execution, in case of refusal to recant, of every 
Anabaptist. A synod of the Brethren was called at 
Jung-Buntzlau for deciding whether rebaptism should be 
abolished and immunity from the danger of being con- 
founded with the proscribed Anabaptists be secured, or 
they should adhere to their old practice and subject them- 
selves to the terrible persecution that was imminent. A 
majority favored the former course. 2 

Nothing has been said about the old-evangelical life of 
Britain during the mediaeval period. Unfortunately the 
information available is by no means satisfactory or com- 
plete. This dearth of materials may, however, be due 

iDollinger, Vol. II., p. 661. 

2 Gindely, " Gesch. der b'ohm. Briider," Bd. I., p. 223 seq. 



LOLLARDS NOT ANTI-PEDOBAPTISTS 55 

to the fortunate circumstance that the inquisition of 
heresy was imperfectly organized and inefficiently worked 
in Britain, and that heretics of the humbler type enjoyed 
during long periods comparative immunity from persecu- 
tion. It is highly probable that the old British type of 
Christianity survived throughout the Middle Ages. It is 
also probable that the old-evangelical Christianity of the 
Continent made its way into Britain in the early part 
of the thirteenth century, if not before the close of the 
twelfth. The encouragement given by Wycliffe, sup- 
ported by the nobility, with his "poor priests," evan- 
gelical tracts, English Bible, etc., doubtless drew out 
into publicity much of old-evangelical life that had been 
latent and caused it to glow with fresh enthusiasm. 

In Lollardism we meet with the same set of views that 
have become familiar to us in our examination of conti- 
nental sect-life, and a clearness in the apprehension of 
the great fundamental truths of Christianity that we en- 
counter only here and there among the continental sec- 
taries. Lollardism was the forerunner of all that was 
best in English Puritanism, from which, in an important 
sense, modern Baptists have derived their origin. But 
we have searched in vain for any satisfactory proof that 
it embodied distinctively Baptist principles or practices. 
We find views of truth that would seem logically to in- 
volve the Baptist position, but alas ! men are not always 
logical. It is possible, nay, probable, that some of the 
mediaeval British evangelicals rejected infant baptism and 
insisted on believers' baptism, but adequate proof has not 
yet been presented. Thomas Walden's charge against 
Wycliffe, that he denied infant baptism and his seeming 
insinuation that the Lollards, whose leader Wycliffe was, 
participated in this heresy, is apparently without founda- 
tion in fact. Nothing appears in Wycliffe's published 
writings — and Lechler claims to have read through all his. 



56 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

extant manuscript works without finding anything — that 
would warrant the inference that he rejected infant bap- 
tism. The nearest approach to the Baptist position is his 
expression of the opinion that unbaptized infants may 
possibly be saved. But he did not even venture so far as 
to express a decided conviction that they would be. His 
rigid predestinarianism inclined him to the opinion that 
elect infants would be saved whether baptized or not ; 
but he was not quite sure whether elect infants ever fail 
to receive baptism. The Lollards took a far more de- 
cided stand than Wycliffe in favor of the salvation of un- 
baptized infants ; but no one of them so far as we are 
aware denied the propriety or the utility of infant bap- 
tism. 

The extent and importance of the old-evangelical 
movement on the Continent of Europe have been for the 
most part greatly underestimated. In fact until recent 
years the materials necessary for forming a correct judg- 
ment were not available. Much documentary matter of 
the most valuable kind has been brought to light during 
the last twenty years and there is every reason to believe 
that important finds will yet be made. The labors of 
Preger, Haupt, Wattenbach, Loserth, and Karl Muller, 
happily still in progress, have already accomplished much 
and will no doubt continue to be fruitful. 

The activity and success of the Waldenses and related 
parties during the fourteenth century were such as to 
cause widespread alarm on the part of the standing 
order. In Southern Germany and throughout the Rhine 
region a great part of the population became identified 
with the Waldenses. In Thuringia, Brandenburg, Bo- 
hemia, Moravia, Silesia, Pomerania, Prussia, and Po- 
land, large numbers of Waldensian communities are 
known to have existed. In Austria they became so 
numerous and aggressive, that the Inquisition feared an 



BOHEMIAN INFLUENCE IN GERMANY 57 

armed uprising. From Styria they spread throughout 
Hungary, even to the remoter provinces, Siebenburgen 
and Galicia. From 1390 onward the Inquisition was ap- 
plied with considerable vigor but with small effect. Es- 
pecially influential did the Waldenses become in the great 
commercial cities of Southern Germany and throughout 
the surrounding regions. In Wiirtzburg, Bamberg, 
Nurnberg, Augsburg, and Strasburg they had a large 
number of adherents, including a considerable number 
from the wealthier classes. So strong was the popular 
sympathy for the evangelicals, that the officers of the 
Inquisition found great difficulty in securing such co-oper- 
ation of the local authorities as was necessary for suc- 
cess. Even the bishops often showed themselves re- 
luctant to allow the introduction of the Inquisition into 
their dioceses. 

Nowhere did the Waldensian preachers find greater 
acceptance than in Bohemia. The Inquisitorial proce- 
dures in 1395 tended to increase rather than to diminish 
their influence, which was undoubtedly one of the prime 
factors in the Bohemian religious revolution of the fif- 
teenth century. The Taborites so modified Waldensian- 
ism as better to adapt it to aggressive work. During the 
first half of the fifteenth century large numbers of Bo- 
hemian evangelists labored in Southern Germany, con- 
firming the old-evangelical party and gaining many new 
adherents. So lively was the intercourse between Bam- 
berg and Nurnberg and the evangelical party in Bohemia, 
that the loyalty of these cities to the church and the 
empire was seriously called into question. " The Bam- 
bergers are neighbors of the Bohemians," we find writ- 
ten in a contemporary document. It is highly probable 
that the artisans' guilds, which prevailed widely during 
the Middle Ages and which had their lodges in all the 
principal cities, were largely under the control of the 



58 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

old-evangelical party and were utilized by them in the 
prosecution of their work. That such was the case to a 
considerable extent is beyond question. The art of print- 
ing arose out of a circle known to have been closely re- 
lated to the old-evangelical party and was early utilized 
for the dissemination of the Bible and old-evangelical 
literature. 

Zeal for Bible study led to the translation of the New 
Testament and portions of the Old Testament into the 
vernacular languages. A careful comparison of a four- 
teenth century manuscript German version of the New 
Testament, discovered a few years ago in the monastery 
of Tepl in Bohemia, with other Waldensian versions, and 
the fact that the manuscript contains a number of other 
documents of a Waldensian character, has rendered it 
highly probable that the version is of Waldensian origin. 
A comparison of the manuscript with the earliest printed 
German Bible reveals identity of text. The later 
editions of the mediaeval German Bible were modified 
little by little toward conformity with the Latin Vulgate 
and with Roman Catholic dogma. The widespread circu- 
lation of vernacular versions of the Bible from 1456 to 
1 5 18 was undoubtedly due in large measure to Walden- 
sian influence. During this period at least fourteen com- 
plete editions of the German Bible and four of the 
Dutch Bible, besides large numbers of Gospels, Psalters, 
and other Scripture portions, were printed. This fact, 
along with the fact that at least ninety-eight complete 
editions of the Latin Bible, with a correspondingly large 
number of Scripture portions, were in circulation by the 
close of the fifteenth century, shows that the Bible was 
anything but a neglected book at the beginning of the 
Protestant Revolution. 

It has been estimated that by 1500 the Bohemian 
Brethren had from three hundred to four hundred 



MYSTICISM AND MILLENARIANISM 59 

congregations, about equally divided between Bohemia 
and Moravia, with a constituency of perhaps two hun- 
dred thousand. 1 They had the support in each country 
of a number of powerful noblemen, who were able to 
protect them to a great extent from the persecuting 
measures of popes, emperors, and kings. In the Al- 
pine valleys of Piedmont, Dauphiny, Languedoc, and 
Provence, the Vaudois had maintained themselves from 
the rise of the party, having been frequently persecuted, 
but never to the extent of extermination. It is probable 
that at the close of the fifteenth century they had as 
many as one hundred congregations, with a constituency 
of possibly fifty thousand. 

It would, we should think, be quite within the bounds, 
in view of what we know of the wide diffusion of old- 
evangelical principles during the thirteenth, fourteenth, 
and fifteenth centuries, if we should place the number of 
Waldensian adherents outside of Bohemia, Moravia, and 
the Alpine valleys at one hundred thousand. 

We have said nothing of evangelical mysticism, with 
its stirring preaching, its widely circulated and highly in- 
fluential literature, its schools for the promotion of evan- 
gelical learning, and its intimate relations to the Walden- 
sian movement. The enthusiastic millenarianism of the 
heretical Franciscans and others exerted a profound in- 
fluence over vast numbers during this period and explains 
some of the unhappy doctrinal developments of the six- 
teenth century. The combination of millenarianism with 
ideas of social revolution, as seen in the Geisslers of the 
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, was repeated in the 
sixteenth century with disastrous results. Dualistic 
heresy greatly declined before the close of the mediaeval 
period ; but an attentive study may reveal some of its 
features surviving in the sect life of the sixteenth cen- 

1 KrummeI, " Utraquisten und Taboriten, " p. 247. 



60 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

tury. Pantheistic mysticism, which wrought out in some 
of the Beghards of the fourteenth and fifteenth centu- 
ries the logical consequences of self-identification with 
God on the part of its adherents and denial of all moral 
distinctions and obligations, reappeared in the Libertines 
of the sixteenth century and in a less extreme form in 
such sect leaders as David Joris and Henry Niclaes. The 
influence of the Italian Renaissance, with its revival of 
freedom of thought and the grammatico-historical study 
of the Scriptures in their original languages, producing as 
it did such Christian scholars as Reuchlin, Erasmus, and 
Colet, cannot be left out of consideration in any careful 
study of the history of the radical evangelical movement 
of the sixteenth century. 

i. In the above brief sketch of extra-Catholic mediae- 
val religious life the aim has been to put the reader in a 
position to form right judgments of the radical move- 
ments of the sixteenth century and to understand the 
peculiar features of the parties that rigidly held aloof 
from the State-Church systems of the time and were 
without much discrimination lumped together and stig- 
matized by their opponents as " Anabaptists." 

2. We have seen that the strivings of mediaeval Chris- 
tianity to shake off the incubus of sacerdotalism and 
ceremonialism and the fearful moral evils that had come 
everywhere to prevail in the dominant church, were far 
more earnest and persistent than were those of the early 
centuries. It seems to have required some generations 
for the fundamental principles of Christianity fully to re- 
assert themselves. It required long experience of the 
ruinous outworking of pagan principles that had intruded 
themselves into the church of the time, so to stir the 
Christian consciousness as to compel the better life of the 
church to protest effectively against the prevailing evils. 
In fact it was only when the Roman hierarchy had be- 



REMARKS 6l 

come thoroughly organized and was taking vigorous 
measures for bringing all the churches into entire subjec- 
tion to itself and so into uniformity of doctrine and prac- 
tice, that organized dissent began to appear, and it in- 
creased and spread as the machinery of the church for 
enforcing uniformity became gradually more perfect. 

3. Even in the Middle Ages we do not find much of Chris- 
tian life that Baptists can recognize as in every respect 
conformable to the apostolic standard. The Petrobru- 
sians and Henricians seem to approach nearer to this 
standard than any other party. They rejected infant 
baptism and practised believer's baptism ; they rejected 
the doctrine of the real presence and probably cele- 
brated the Supper as a simple memorial, but of this 
last we have no direct evidence. Whether they laid 
stress on immersion as the only allowable form of 
baptism we do not know. The probability is that on 
this point they did not differ from the Romanists of 
their time, who while fully acknowledging that normal 
baptism was immersion had long since admitted other 
forms as more convenient and as answering the purpose 
equally well. The early Waldenses, we have seen, 
had scarcely anything in common with Baptists. Of the 
later Waldenses some, probably not a large proportion, 
came to reject infant baptism. But even these seem 
to have fallen far short of the Baptist position in other 
respects. The same may be said of the Taborites and 
the Bohemian Brethren. Even those who rejected infant 
baptism and practised rebaptism had much in their doc- 
trine and practice that present-day Baptists would not 
fellowship. 



Literature: Pertinent works of Goll, Laserth, Gindely, Palacky, 
Zezschwitz, Baum, De Schweinitz, Holler, Krummel, Preger, Keller, 
and Lea, as in the Bibliography. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE ZWICKAU PROPHETS 

THE so-called Anabaptist movement of the sixteenth 
century had its roots in the evangelical life and 
thought of the Middle Ages. Even the non-evangelical 
and corrupting elements that appeared in connection with 
the sect life of the sixteenth century had their ante- 
cedents in the earlier time. The term "Anabaptist" 
was applied indiscriminately to all who would be neither 
Protestants nor Catholics and who insisted on setting up 
separate churches for the embodiment of their peculiar 
views. To the dominant parties Thomas Miinzer, the 
mystical fanatic, who neither submitted to nor practised 
rebaptism, who to the last practised infant baptism and 
who advocated the setting up of the kingdom of Christ 
by carnal warfare, the scholarly and soundly scriptural 
Hubmaier, the mystical Denck, and the chiliastic fanatics 
of Munster, were all alike " Anabaptists "; and even the 
most Christlike of these were treated as criminals of the 
deepest dye. There was some excuse for this confusion 
in the fact that most of the separatists of the time agreed 
in denying the scriptural authorization of infant baptism. 
Difficulty has been felt by some in connecting the 
Anabaptist movement with mediaeval parties on the 
ground of supposed lack of evidence of the passing over of 
the adherents of the older parties to the new. But are 
we not confronted with even graver difficulties if we deny 
such connection ? During the thirteenth, fourteenth, and 
fifteenth centuries multitudes of evangelical Christians 
are known to have quietly yet persistently carried on 
their work in some of the very regions where the Ana- 
62 



SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS AGITATION 63 

baptist movement attained to its greatest popularity and 
power. How shall we account for the disappearance of 
this organized evangelical life that had patiently endured 
and survived three centuries of terrible persecution ? 
The last years of the fifteenth century and the early 
years of the sixteenth were highly favorable for the de- 
velopment of evangelical life. The impetus given to evan- 
gelical study by Humanism, the wide circulation of the 
Scriptures and of evangelical literature through the newly 
discovered art of printing, the spirit of toleration that was 
fostered by Humanism and that resulted in comparative 
immunity for quiet dissenters — these considerations make 
preposterous the supposition that there had been a decline 
in evangelical life shortly before the beginning of Lu- 
ther's reformatory work. There had doubtless been a 
marked increase of spiritual life in the dominant church, 
but as the anti-Catholic evangelical movement persisted 
with great vigor in Bohemia, Moravia, and the Alpine val- 
leys, so we must believe that it persisted in Germany, 
Switzerland, Upper Austria, and the Netherlands, al- 
though few inquisitorial processes are recorded during 
the years immediately preceding the Protestant Revolu- 
tion. 

The beginning of the sixteenth century was a time of 
unrest and expectancy. A spirit of revolution was 
abroad. Enough of evangelical light and enough of the 
spirit of freedom had been diffused among the masses to 
insure an enthusiastic reception for any movement that 
should give fair promise of relief from priestcraft and of 
social amelioration. The clergy and monks of the domi- 
nant religion were not only as a rule ignorant, immoral, 
and negligent, but the extortionate methods of raising 
money, made necessary by the luxury and extravagance 
of the hierarchy, aggravated the popular discontent. 
They were no longer looked upon as the friends and pro- 



64 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

tectors of the people, but as a privileged class whose in- 
terest lay in keeping them in bondage. The burdens of 
serfdom had not only become intrinsically heavier, owing 
to peculiar circumstances, but by reason of the growing 
democratic spirit of the time infinitely harder to be borne. 
The peasant uprisings before as well as after the inau- 
guration of the Protestant movement show how general 
and profound was the popular unrest. 

When Luther denounced indulgences and afterward 
went on assailing one after another of the corruptions 
and errors of the Roman Church, those who had come 
under old-evangelical influence, whether as members of a 
sect or as disaffected members of the dominant church, 
felt that now at last the day of deliverance had come. 
The bold reformer, taking his stand on Scripture and in- 
sisting on bringing every doctrine and practice to the 
Scripture touchstone, defying emperor and pope and 
boldly standing forth as the champion of evangelical truth 
and of the rights of man, must have made a wonderful 
impression on those who were listening for such a voice. 

Evangelical mystics, churchly and non-churchly, 
hailed with delight Luther's advent as a reformer, for 
was he not the devoted disciple of Staupitz ? Had he 
not published with highest commendation the " Theologia 
Germanica," the text-book of evangelical mysticism ? 
And had he not commended in the highest terms the 
works of Tauler ? 

Humanists too gloried in his utter repudiation of 
authority and in his insistence on freedom of thought. 
They trusted that his influence would be strongly favor- 
able to the advancement of the new learning and would 
contribute much toward the dethronement of bigotry 
and intolerance. 

He had the ear of the nobility of Germany, for they 
were weary of the extortions of Rome, and eager to 



LUTHER PROVES DISAPPOINTING 65 

secure a larger share of the control and emoluments of 
ecclesiastical property and patronage. Moreover the 
spirit of revolution had made itself felt in them no less 
than among the people. 

Thus Luther's proclamation of emancipation from 
Rome and restoration of a scriptural religion and moral- 
ity met with very general acceptance. 

The Bohemian Brethren of Bohemia and Moravia, and 
the Vaudois of the Alpine valleys heard thereof and 
were glad, and both parties sought to harmonize their 
views with those of the great reformer. That the old- 
evangelicals of Germany (Waldenses, etc.) should have 
promptly accepted Luther as their leader, without mak- 
ing public proclamation of the fact that they had be- 
longed to a proscribed party, is what might have been 
expected. 

The old-evangelicals, no less than the mystics, the 
Humanists, and the discontented masses, were destined 
to be sorely disappointed. That such was the case was 
not wholly Luther's fault. Each party no doubt ex- 
pected too much. The impetuous reformer did not always 
weigh well his words. He spoke with enthusiasm and 
with power in view of the actual civil and ecclesiastical 
condition, and naturally did not stop to consider the 
bearing of his words on a different state of things, or 
their effect on minds differently constituted from his 
own and with different antecedents. He early set for 
himself the task of leading the German people as a body 
out of Roman bondage into evangelical freedom. To do 
this he must have the hearty co-operation of the rulers 
and no place must be given to internal schism. When 
he would arouse the German people to a sense of their 
dignity as Christian men and of the degradation involved 
in bondage to Romish priestcraft, he could proclaim with 
enthusiasm the universal priesthood of believers and the 



66 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

right of every Christian man to interpret the Scriptures 
for himself. He could repudiate with indignation the use 
of force in repressing error or in constraining men to the 
acceptance of truth. He could assert with utmost em- 
phasis the sufficiency and authority of Scripture as a 
norm of faith and practice. In his tract on vows, written 
at the Wartburg (i 521-2), he had condemned uncondi- 
tionally " whatever falls short of, is apart from, or goes 
beyond Christ," 1 and had repudiated the papal propo- 
sition, "that all things have not been declared and insti- 
tuted by Christ and the apostles, but that very many 
things were left to the church to be declared and insti- 
tuted." Even after his reactionary attitude had been 
assumed, we find him asserting with reference to Roman 
Catholic usages "that whatever is without the word of 
God is by that very fact against God." 2 

It was utterly impossible that, circumstances being as 
they were, Luther should have been able to satisfy the 
heterogeneous aspirations of all who centered their hopes 
in him. It was equally inevitable that, constituted as he 
was, he should modify his views materially when events 
seemed to him to demonstrate their unsoundness or im- 
practicability. To demand of a popular religious leader 
in a revolutionary time a fully matured and enunciated 
programme, which should provide against emergencies 
that no human wisdom could foresee, would be unreason- 
able. Emergencies of the gravest character were not slow 
in arising, and as a practical man he must decide, as it 
seemed to him, between a complete reversal of policy 
as regards liberty of conscience, the rights of man, and 
the requirement of direct scriptural authority for every 
doctrine and practice, and the utter wrecking of the 
Protestant movement. 

1 "Vel citra, -vel prater, -vel ultra Christum incedit." 
2 " Eo ipso contra Deum, quod sine -verbo Dei. '" 



MUNZER AT ZWICKAU 67 

While Luther was still at the Wartburg, biding his 
time for actively proceeding with his work of reforma- 
tion, revolutionary procedures at Zwickau and at Wit- 
tenberg clearly revealed to him the fact that half-way 
measures of reform would no longer satisfy the radical 
evangelicals and caused him not only to antagonize the 
radical party, but also to abandon completely his tolera- 
tion principles. 

Thomas Munzer, born 1490 or later, well educated (he 
was a Master of Arts and seems to have studied in more 
than one university), a profound student like Luther of 
mystic literature, having filled a number of ecclesiastical 
positions without dishonor was called to Zwickau in 
1520. He seems to have been active in reform before 
Luther broke with the papacy, but he lacked the sta- 
bility that was requisite for effective leadership. He was 
on excellent terms with Luther and went to Zwickau 
with his full approval. Here he at once aroused the hos- 
tility of the monks and some of the clergy by the vigor 
with which he denounced the avarice, hypocrisy, and 
unevangelical features of monastic and priestly life. 
He still regarded Luther (July, 1520) as "the example 
and light of the friends of God." 

Still more bitter was his controversy with Egranus, 
pastor of the principal church, who resented the promi- 
nence assumed by Munzer and his aggressiveness in 
promulgating his ultra-evangelical views. Egranus' 
character, unfortunately, was not altogether above 
reproach, and his doctrine whether from a Protestant or 
from a Catholic point of view was not free from sus- 
picion. We have no reason to suppose that up to this 
time Munzer had enunciated any of the fanatical teach- 
ings for which he afterward became famous. His intem- 
perate attacks on Egranus displeased Luther and turned 
against him many of the more moderate men of Zwickau. 



68 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

We soon find at Munzer's side, in his conflict with 
monks and clergy and in his strivings for radical religious 
and social reform, a certain weaver, Nicholas Storch by 
name. The accounts that have come down to us of this 
remarkable man are defective and somewhat conflicting. 
He is spoken of as a former citizen of Zwickau and may 
have been born there, but the authorities agree in repre- 
senting him as deriving his religious views from Bohemia. 
As a journeyman weaver he probably spent a number of 
years in Bohemia where he came under the influence of 
a party of the Bohemian Brethren. From the peculiar 
type of his teaching, it may be inferred that his religious 
associates in Bohemia belonged to that section of the 
Brethren that had perpetuated the chiliastic teachings of 
the Taborites. After the manner of the Brethren, he 
had acquired a remarkable familiarity with the Scriptures, 
so that although a layman and illiterate he could quote at 
pleasure from the Old and New Testaments, giving chapter 
and verse in a way that astonished his contemporaries, 
some regarding him as divinely inspired and others as in 
collusion with Satan. In fact he is said to have encour- 
aged the idea that his knowledge of Scripture, no less than 
his own prophetic utterances, was due to direct divine 
inspiration. He had doubtless been quietly propagating 
his socialistic and millenarian views in Zwickau for some 
time before the advent of Miinzer. That he should have 
come forward boldly in support of Munzer's radical 
views when the latter became involved in controversy 
was natural enough. Miinzer in turn gave him high 
commendation, declaring that he understood the Bible 
better than all the priests and that he had the Spirit of 
God. 

Encouraged by Miinzer, Storch organized a separate 
church on the model of the Bohemian churches with 
which he had been connected. He is said to have 



MUNZER AT PRAGUE AND ALSTEDT 69 

secured the appointment of twelve apostles and seventy- 
two disciples, after the example of our Lord, and to have 
considered himself divinely commissioned to lead in set- 
ting up the millennial kingdom of Christ on earth. 

We have no thoroughly trustworthy account of the 
doctrinal system that Storch sought to embody in his new 
organization. It seems certain that he rejected infant 
baptism, though there is no evidence that he rebaptized 
while in Zwickau, and according to one account he 
regarded the protest against infant baptism as a wholly 
subordinate matter. Luther, however, understood him 
to lay more stress on this point than did some of his 
associates. He seems to have insisted on the separation 
of a believing husband or wife from an unbelieving 
partner. The rejection of oaths, magistracy, and war- 
fare, and insistence on community of goods among Chris- 
tians, are the other charges made against him, and as 
these were features common to the mediaeval evangelical 
parties and to many of the later Anabaptists, we have 
no reason to call in question the correctness of the rep- 
resentation. 

Miinzer felt it advisable, if not necessary, to leave 
Zwickau about the end of April, 1521, on account of cer- 
tain riotous demonstrations in which his followers had 
figured a few months before. Toward the end of the 
year we find him at Prague, whither he had gone to 
secure the co-operation of the Bohemians in a great move- 
ment for the abolition of social inequalities and the set- 
ting up of a kingdom of righteousness. By this time he 
seems to have been thoroughly in accord with Storch as 
regards millenarian expectations, and to have believed 
himself to be the recipient of divine communications 
that he exalted above the written word. "The letter 
killeth, the Spirit maketh alive." 

In Prague he appeared as a prophet and issued a proc- 



70 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

lamation in the name of God, promising a marvelous 
manifestation of God's power in the setting up of a new 
and holy church in their own land if they would hearken 
to the divine message, and threatening the vengeance of 
God through a Turkish invasion in case they refused to 
hearken. He returned to Germany early in 1522 and 
spent the year chiefly at Nordhausen. There is little 
record of his activity during this year ; but he could 
not have refrained from bringing his views to bear upon 
as many as he could reach. 

About Easter, 1523, he accepted a pastorate in Alstedt, 
in Thuringia, and soon afterward married an ex-nun. 
He was still on friendly terms with Luther, who, as we 
shall see hereafter, was aware of his erratic disposition, 
but did not yet suspect the lengths to which he was pre- 
pared to go. Here he took a leading part in preparing 
and introducing an elaborate church service, wholly in 
German, which, together with his eloquent preaching, 
attracted vast audiences from all the surrounding region. 
It is remarkable that, although Munzer had earlier ex- 
pressed himself against infant baptism, he makes pro- 
vision for it in his liturgy. He afterward sought to excuse 
the inconsistency by saying that he baptized only once 
in two or three months and then sought strongly to im- 
press the responsibility of parents and sponsors for the 
right training of the children. The fact is, Munzer cared 
little for water baptism ; true baptism was baptism of the 
Spirit. 

But we must return to Zwickau, where Munzer left 
Storch and his conventicle about Easter, 1521. Munzer's 
successor, Nicolas Hausmann, was unfriendly to the 
movement and began at once to take steps for its sup- 
pression. Storch and his followers were arraigned before 
the municipal authorities, December 16, 1521, on the 
charge of repudiating infant baptism. All except Storch 



THE PROPHETS AT WITTENBERG 71 

himself and one of his disciples named Forster were 
brought to admit that infant baptism is of use by reason 
of the faith of the sponsors. Storch was required to 
appear at a later date for a still further examination " on 
some erroneous Bohemian articles." He did not respond 
to the summons, but confident of the correctness and 
the importance of his views, in company with Marcus 
Stiibner, a former student of Wittenberg, and another 
weaver who had been won to his views, he set out for 
Wittenberg with the purpose of winning the professors 
of the university and thus gaining a strong support for 
his cause. It was a bold venture ; but it showed the 
sincerity of the faith of these men and their eagerness 
to propagate their views. 

Nor was their faith wholly disappointed. Carlstadt, 
rector of the university, and like Luther a great student 
of the Bible, Augustine, and the German mystics, was 
carried away by the enthusiasm of Storch and Stiibner. 
He attempted to carry out in practice these radical views 
by removing from the church all objects of idolatry and 
simplifying the service so as to make a complete breach 
with the past. The time had come, he thought, to put 
an end to all temporizing and to restore the church to 
primitive simplicity and purity. He cast aside his scho- 
lastic attire, renounced his doctor's degree, and practised 
in his own life the simplicity that he thought the gospel 
required. 

Cellarius, one of the most learned Hebrew and Ara- 
maic scholars of the time, set himself to oppose the 
Zwickau prophets. The result of his efforts was his own 
conversion to their position. Melancthon too was greatly 
impressed for a time, but was able at last to throw off 
the spell and to join with Luther in condemning the 
prophets. Writing to the Elector Frederick (December 17) 
he says : " Wonderful are the things that they assert 



72 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

concerning themselves : that they have been sent to 
teach by the clear voice of God ; that they hold familiar 
conversations with God ; that they see the future ; in 
short, that they are prophets and apostles. I can scarcely 
tell how I am moved by these things. Certainly I have 
weighty reasons for not being willing to treat them with 
contempt." He feels sure that there are in them "cer- 
tain spirits." Whether they be good spirits or evil can, 
he thinks, be determined only by Luther. A fortnight 
later he has ceased to be greatly disturbed by their pro- 
phetic claims, but what they have advanced against in- 
fant baptism continues to trouble him. He finds no 
scriptural warrant for the practice and he is at a loss to 
know how to justify its retention. 

Luther's letter of January 13 doubtless had the effect 
of restoring his equanimity. He assures Philip that he 
has more intellect and more learning than himself, and 
insists that he should have tried the spirits. These proph- 
ets had little to commend them and much to awaken mis- 
trust. If they have the special divine commission they 
claim they should be in a position to furnish some sign by 
which they could be unmistakably recognized as prophets 
of God. As it regards the question of infant baptism, 
his arguments may have satisfied Melancthon, anxious to 
be reassured, but few would now consider them other 
than sophistical. Referring to the scripture on which the 
prophets based their contention : " Whosoever shall have 
believed and shall have been baptized shall be saved," 
he asks, " How will they prove that they (infants) do not 
believe ? Because, forsooth, they do not speak and 
show forth faith ? Very well. By this reasoning, how 
many hours will we ourselves not be Christians, while 
we sleep and do other things? Cannot God therefore in 
the same manner throughout the whole period of infancy, 
as in a continuous sleep, preserve faith in them? " 



LUTHER'S TRIUMPH 73 

No doubt this argument first came to Luther as an 
argnmentum ad hominem. These prophets were making 
great claims for themselves without giving proof. Why 
not throw on them the responsibility of proving that'un- 
conscious infants do not exercise saving faith? He pro- 
ceeds to justify infant baptism on the ground of the 
united testimony of the church, which it is most impious 
to reject. Forgetting for the time being the strong state- 
ments against non-scriptural ceremonies and institutions 
which, by the way, he would still employ when it served 
his turn to do so, he formulates a new canon in the fol- 
lowing words : " What therefore is not against Scripture 
is for Scripture, and Scripture for it." ' 

The disturbances at Wittenberg occasioned by the 
visit of the prophets, and especially Carlstadt's some- 
what iconoclastic procedures, determined Luther to leave 
his retreat at the Wartburg, even without the full ap- 
proval of the Elector. At this period he was extremely 
sensitive with reference to anything that might cause 
scandal. Any further schism than that which he had 
accomplished he deprecated, and he thought it highly un- 
desirable to offend the weak by violating ecclesiastical 
fasts or by making radical changes in the church services. 
He returned to Wittenberg early in March, 1522, and was 
soon master of the situation. He showed little dispo- 
sition to give a fair and patient hearing to such of the 
prophets as sought to convert him, ridiculing their ex- 
travagant claims and demanding miraculous attestations 
of their divine commission. 

Carlstadt was completely humiliated and ultimately 
felt obliged to withdraw from Wittenberg. Although he 
denied the scriptural authorization of infant baptism, he 
does not seem to have gone the length of introducing be- 
lievers' baptism. He took strong ground against Luther's 

1 "Quod ergo non est contra Scripturam, pro Scriptura est, et Scriptura pro eo." 



74 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

doctrine of the real presence and from 1530 onward 
allied himself with the Zwinglians. His iconoclastic 
precedures at Orlamiinde, whither he had gone after 
leaving Wittenberg in 1523, resulted in his expulsion and 
banishment, for which Luther was largely responsible. 
For years he was in circumstances of the utmost hard- 
ship. He seems soon to have escaped from the prophetic 
infatuation and endeavored without success to restrain 
the extravagances of Munzer. Some years later (1534) 
he secured a professorship in the University of Basel, 
which he held until his death in 1 541 . 

Cellarius also while persisting in denying the propriety 
of infant baptism and in advocating millenarian views, 
made little effort to put his views in practice. He also 
found refuge with the Swiss, gained the friendship of 
OEcolampadius and Capito, profoundly impressed both 
with his ability and sincerity, and almost won them, 
especially the latter, to his views. Like Carlstadt he 
finally secured (1546) a professorship at Basel, which he 
long filled in a highly honorable way. 

There is no evidence that Storch returned to Zwickau 
after the interview of the prophets with Luther. His 
movements for some time are very obscure. As re- 
gards the radical movement at Zwickau, it seems to have 
rapidly declined after the removal of Storch and Munzer. 
Luther visited the city during the latter part of Apriland 
delivered to immense audiences (variously estimated at 
from fourteen thousand to twenty-five thousand persons) 
four powerful discourses against religious radicalism and 
fanaticism. 

Storch seems to have remained in Thuringia until the 
autumn, for Luther writes in September of an interview 
with him as if it had been recent. According to Luther, 
he " dressed and wore his beard like a lance-knight, and 
was in all points in contradiction with Marcus and 



STORCH'S LATER CAREER 75 

Thomas "(Stiibner and Miinzer). We infer from another 
notice of Luther's, that from his point of view Storch was 
at this time far more pronounced in his radicalism than 
Miinzer. He seems to have been for some time at Or- 
lamiinde after Carlstadt's settlement there in 1523, and 
doubtless continued to sustain intimate relations with 
Miinzer as well. 

In 1524 we find him at Hof in the employ of the burgo- 
master Simon Klinger, who was converted to his views 
and became the chief supporter of a radical movement like 
that at Zwickau. Here also he set forth claims to special 
divine illumination. The medium of the divine communi- 
cations was the angel Gabriel. Even those who dis- 
trusted his claim to be a prophet of God were willing to 
grant that there was something supernatural in connec- 
tion with his utterances, and he was accused of practising 
the " black art " in league with Satan. Here also he is 
said to have appointed twelve apostles to go forth and 
proclaim the setting up of the kingdom of Christ. After 
raising considerable commotion he felt obliged to flee from 
the city. After a somewhat similar experience at Glogau 
in Silesia, he seems to have returned to Saxony and to 
have spent the early months of 1525 in league with 
Miinzer, traveling from place to place in the interest 
of the politico-religious revolution that culminated in the 
Peasants' War. Whether he was with the peasants during 
the struggle is uncertain. He is said to have prophesied 
that within four years he himself, as being divinely com- 
missioned thereunto, would assume dominion and that 
the saints should everywhere reign in righteousness. 
According to Widemann, he died in a hospital at Munich 
in 1525. 

Literature : On Miinzer : Merx, Strobel, Seidemann, Streif, Arnold 
(Kirch-u.-Ketzerhistorie), Hast (Wiedertaufer), Erbkam (Prot. Sek- 



76 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

ten), Forstemann (Neues Urkundenbuch), and works on the Pea- 
sants' War (as in chap. VII). On Storch : Bachmann, Erbkam, 
Hast, Meyer (Zeitschr. f. Kirchegesch., Bd. XVI., p. 117, seq.). 
On Carlstadt: Jager, Fusslin, Erbkam. The correspondence of 
the leading reformers (Luther, Melancthon, etc.), contains many 
important notices. 



CHAPTER VII 

THOMAS MUNZER AND THE PEASANTS' WAR. 

WE left Munzer about the middle of 1523 in Alstedt, 
with a new church service prepared and adopted, 
highly popular, and happily married withal. From this 
time onward his preaching grew more and more recklessly 
denunciatory. The lives of priests, monks, and nuns 
were doubtless open to criticism. He indulged in the 
most intemperate vilification of these classes, who were 
he thought, living in idleness, luxury, and vice at the ex- 
pense of the workingman. He did not hesitate to advise 
the withholding of all tithes and rents. Under the im- 
pulse of his denunciations a nunnery was plundered, holy 
objects were profaned, and the inmates maltreated. The 
effort to punish the guilty parties led to riotous proce- 
dures which had Munzer's approval. He did not spare 
such high civil dignitaries as Count Ernst of Mansfeld 
and Duke George of Saxony, who attempted to meddle 
with Alstedt affairs. The Lutheran preachers also came 
in for a share of his denunciation so far as they fell 
short of the standard he had set up. Obedience to civil 
rulers was obligatory on Christians only so far as they 
ruled righteously. " God gave lords and princes in his 
anger and he will do away with them in his sore dis- 
pleasure." The very title "prince" displeased him. 
It ought to be reserved for Christ, to whom alone it 
rightly belongs. " If princes act not only against the 
gospel, but also against the natural rights of the people, 
they should be strangled like dogs." According to his 
view, as set forth just before his execution, Christians 
should all be equal. His aim was to bring about a religio- 

77 



78 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

social state in which private property should be utterly 
abolished, and in which each individual should have 
enough and no more than enough of the common product 
and in which each should contribute according to his 
ability to the work of production. He was a thorough- 
going socialist of the modern type ; but his socialism 
was grounded not merely on natural right — it was the 
requirement of the gospel. He believed, moreover, 
that he was especially commissioned by God to pro- 
claim the inauguration of this new social state, and to 
use every means for arousing the people to a sense of 
their rights. He predicted that in a short time the 
power would be in the hands of the people. "Whoever 
will be a stone of the new church, let him risk his 
neck, otherwise he will be rejected by the builders." 
"If you have not the pure fear of God," he said in a ser- 
mon, " you can stand your ground in no conflict. If you 
have it, you will stand victorious before all tyrants, and 
they shall be so miserably put to shame, that they will 
have nothing to say." 

Munzer's influence was by no means confined to Al- 
stedt. Eisleben, Mansfeld, Sangerhausen, Franken- 
hausen, Querfurt, Halle, Aschersleben, Nordhausen, 
Muhlhausen, and some of the Swiss communities, are 
known to have been more or less agitated by his teach- 
ings. He encouraged the people to form secret societies 
for the propagation of these views and to make ready for 
action when the time should come. More than thirty of 
these societies had been formed by the middle of July, 
1524. 1 

The violent controversy into which he fell with Luther 
during his stay at Alstedt is of subordinate importance in 
the present discussion. He attacked in the most intem- 

'See Munzer's letter to his Sangerhausen co-religionists, in " Forstemann," p. 
237, seq. 



PFEIFFER AND MUHLHAUSEN 79 

perate way Luther's teachings on faith, Scripture, and 
baptism. Luther was not to be outdone when it came to 
the matter of invective and he did his full share of the 
hard hitting. 

Luther's influence with Duke John and the Elector of 
Saxony proved sufficient to secure their active interven- 
tion. Although Miinzer had a large majority of the 
people of Alstedt on his side, including a number of the 
leading officials, he was compelled to quit the city and 
seek another basis of operations. This occurred early in 
August, 1524. He betook himself at once to Muhlhausen, 
where he already had many who favored him, and where 
the eloquent and enthusiastic Heinrich Pfeiffer had al- 
ready for some months been conducting a religio-social- 
istic agitation in Munzer's own spirit. Pfeiffer had come 
to Muhlhausen as a preacher about the beginning of 1523 
and by his vigorous denunciations of the clergy and re- 
ligious orders and the zealous promulgation of his own 
scheme of reform had set the city in a commotion. The 
monks and nuns (he was an ex-monk himself) he declared 
to be "servants of the devil," and their possessions 
" the sweat and blood of the poor." 

A strong revolutionary party was soon organized, 
which issued a programme of reform containing fifty- 
three articles, only two of which are distinctively relig- 
ious. Of these latter the first demanded that the parish 
churches and chapels be provided with evangelical 
preachers ; the second, that there should be no interfer- 
ence with the preaching of the gospel. The rest of the 
articles were of politico-social bearing, and aimed at the 
abolition of abuses and the securing of a larger measure 
of civil liberty. The refusal of- the council to accede to 
these demands was followed by a riot of which the sack- 
ing of the monasteries constituted the chief feature. The 
revolutionary party succeeded in compelling the council 



80 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

to accept the articles, and both parties undertook to live 
thenceforth in peace and unity and not to seek the inter- 
vention of emperor, kings, princes, or any other outside 
parties. 

A reaction soon set in and the council, supported by 
the conservative elements, was able to banish Pfeiffer 
and his chief co-laborer, August 24, 1523. In December 
Pfeiffer was able to resume his work in Muhlhausen. 
During his absence, whether through personal intercourse 
with Munzer or in some indirect way, he had become 
imbued with the whole circle of Miinzer's ideas. Like 
Munzer he now magnified the Jewish law and insisted on 
its being put into practice. The example of Old Testa- 
ment heroes in taking up the sword against the enemies 
of God and meting out summary punishment to those 
who refused to submit to the setting up of a righteous 
government, he considered worthy of imitation. There 
was nothing good in the clergy from sole to scalp ; they 
were worthy only of being strangled as perverters of 
the people. Uproar soon followed, churches were plun- 
dered, and images, relics, and other instruments of super- 
stition destroyed. 

Miinzer's arrival about the middle of August could 
have had no other effect than to intensify the revolu- 
tionary spirit. With two such arch-agitators as Munzer 
and Pfeiffer in one small city a crisis must soon be 
reached. The flight of about ten members of the coun- 
cil and of the two burgomasters left that body in a 
crippled condition. So timid had the remaining members 
become, that they thought it prudent to ask the citizens 
for advice. Pfeiffer and Munzer were in a position to 
speak for the majority. Under their direction eleven 
articles were formulated for the guidance of the council. 
These provided for the constitution of a new council, 
that should rule according to the Bible and God's word 



RETURN TO MUHLHAUSEN 8 1 

and execute justice and judgment by the same standard. 
The council should be chosen in perpetuity and death 
should be the penalty of failure to do justice or to avoid 
injustice. No one should be compelled to accept a posi- 
tion on the couucil, and members of the council should 
be suitably supported. In case the present council should 
refuse to accept the proposed arrangement their acts of 
unrighteousness for the past twenty years would be pub- 
lished and the citizens would have no further communion 
with them. It is emphatically insisted that all works and 
transactions are to be carried out according to the com- 
mands of God and of righteousness, without any refer- 
ence to men. Evidently a theocracy of a very rigid type 
was in the minds of Miinzer and Pfeiffer. Supported by 
the neighboring villagers, who had not yet been won to 
the revolutionary cause, the council was able to resist 
the demands of the citizens and to expel Pfeiffer and 
Miinzer from the city (September 27). They now di- 
rected their steps to Nurnberg. 

Their reputation as dangerous religio-socialistic agita- 
tors followed them and after a brief sojourn they were 
obliged to leave the city. Pfeiffer returned to Miihl- 
hausen in December, and with the support of the villa- 
gers, now zealous for social reform, was able to withstand 
his enemies in the council. It is probable that he spent 
the time between his expulsion from Nurnberg and his 
return to Miihlhausen in winning the allegiance of the vil- 
lagers. Before leaving Miihlhausen Miinzer had secretly 
printed a strong polemic against Luther and other oppo- 
nents of the gospel. As Luther had dedicated his writ- 
ing against Miinzer to the "princes of Saxony," this re- 
joinder was dedicated to "the most august first-born 
Prince and Almighty Lord Jesus Christ, the gracious 
King of all kings, and to his afflicted bride, poor Christen- 
dom." In this document he set forth his social-theo- 

F 



82 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

cratic system without reserve. He maintained, " that a 
community as a whole has the power of the sword, and 
that the princes are not lords but servants of the sword ; 
therefore also they have unrighteously appropriated the 
fish in the water, the birds in the air, the products of the 
soil." He says in conclusion: "The people shall be- 
come free, and God will be the only Lord over them." 
According to his own account, he could easily have made 
trouble in Nurnberg, but his principal object had been not 
to arouse the people but to publish the writing referred 
to. He spent the next few months in Swabia, Switzer- 
land, and Waldshut. Preparations for a peasant uprising 
in Swabia were already far advanced. Miinzer undoubt- 
edly gave all the encouragement he could to the aspira- 
tions of the people for political freedom and for the re- 
dress of social grievances. He had several interviews 
with OEcolampadius at Basel, who treated him more hos- 
pitably than his friends thought prudent. At Waldshut 
he was undoubtedly in conference with Balthasar Hub- 
maier, at this time the highly popular chief pastor of the 
city, who also was something of a religious democrat, 
but whose ideas of human rights were free from chili- 
astic fanaticism. 

Munzer returned to Muhlhausen about January, 1525, 
and was soon made pastor of the principal church. 
Along with Pfeiffer he became the chief director of 
ecclesiastical affairs. Already before Munzer's return 
the churches and monasteries had been stripped of all 
idolatrous objects and the inmates of the latter with few 
exceptions had been driven away. Munzer was now in 
a position to put his theories in practice as never before. 
So great was the preponderance of influence on the radi- 
cal side that the old council was compelled to allow the 
appointment of a new one in hearty sympathy with 
Pfeiffer and Munzer. The churches and their services 



THE SWORD OF GIDEON 83 

were reduced to plainness and simplicity ; the valuable 
articles from the churches and monasteries were sold 
and the proceeds applied to public uses, while the cruci- 
fixes, pictures of saints, relics, etc., were destroyed. 

It is probable that during this period Pfeiffer was even 
more aggressive than Munzer himself. The peasants' 
revolt, that had for months been moving northward, after 
its early successes in Swabia and Alsace, reached the 
neighborhood of Muhlhausen early in May, 1525. Prepa- 
rations had been made to join in the movement when the 
right time should come. Munzer had long preached 
revolution and had prophesied the success of the cause 
of the workingman. He had led the people to believe 
that supernatural aid would be vouchsafed to them in 
this righteous cause, as in the Old Testament times. 
He adopted as his signature "Thomas Munzer with the 
hammer," and " Thomas Munzer with the sword of Gid- 
eon." He had come to believe that it was the will of 
God that all the unrighteous should be destroyed by the 
righteous from the face of the earth, as the Canaanites 
were by divine direction destroyed by the children of 
Israel. "On! on! on!" he shrieked; "nevermind the 
wail of the godless. Though they beg in friendly tones, 
though they cry and whimper like children, pity not. 
On! on! while the fire is hot. Down with the castles 
and their inmates. God is with you. On! on! " By 
this time the nobility had been able to rally their forces 
and to secure concerted action. Munzer and his hosts 
were unused to warfare and poorly equipped. They 
were trusting more to supernatural aid than to the use of 
the arts of war. They were miserably overwhelmed by 
their enemies. About one hundred thousand peasants 
are supposed to have been massacred in this misguided 
struggle for civil and religious liberty. Munzer was 
arrested and shortly afterward put to death. 



84 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

What is the significance of the events that have been 
thus outlined ? 

i. We must distinguish between the aspirations and 
strivings of the peasants in Swabia and Alsace, and the 
fanatical procedures of Miinzer and Pfeiffer. The cause 
of the peasants was a righteous cause. If ever an 
oppressed class was justified in rebelling against consti- 
tuted authority, the peasants of Germany were surely 
justified in organizing themselves as they did and in ven- 
turing their lives for civil and religious liberty. The 
oppression under which they groaned had become intol- 
erable, and the enthusiastic utterances of Luther and 
others had given them a clear consciousness of the rights 
of man and of the unjustifiableness of tyranny. This 
is not the place to give in detail the grievances of the 
peasants. The twelve articles in which they set forth 
their demands, as has been justly said, are worthy of a 
Solon. There is not one trace of fanaticism in the docu- 
ment. It is in the spirit of the best mediaeval evangeli- 
cal thought. It is in accord with the best that was con- 
tained in Luther's earlier utterances. It is in accord 
with Baptist views of civil and religious liberty. It is in 
accord with modern democratic principles. There is no 
demand for community of goods. There is no suggestion 
of theocratic government. The people claim the right to 
appoint and remove pastors and to insist upon the preach- 
ing of the gospel in its purity and simplicity. They 
demand the abolition of oppressive laws as regards 
wages, rents, tithes, the " heriot " or death gift, hunting, 
fishing, the use of the forests for fuel and timber, etc. 
The demands are all most reasonable and Christian. 
Moreover the authors of the demands express a willing- 
ness to abandon any one of them that shall be shown to 
be out of accord with Scripture. So thoroughly sound 
are these articles that they have by some been attributed 



CHILIASM AND MYSTICISM 85 

to Hubmaier, who probably came nearer to the modern 
Baptist position than any man in the sixteenth century. 
There is nothing in them that he might not have written, 
and as he was certainly in thorough sympathy with the 
just demands of the peasantry, it is not improbable that 
he had at least something to do with the drafting of the 
document. 

2. The influence of Storch, Munzer, and Pfeiffer on the 
peasant movement was evil and only evil. They were 
in no sense the originators of it, and so far as their influ- 
ence went it was in the direction of intensifying hatred 
and preparing the people for deeds of cruel vengeance in 
the name of religion. The most revolting scenes of Old 
Testament history were held up to the people as models 
of what God would approve in the setting up of a modern 
Christian theocracy. The corrupting elements in the 
teachings of this party are easy to discern. Chiliasm in 
time of revolution is almost sure to lead certain classes 
of minds into fanaticism. The man who so interprets 
the prophetical Scriptures as to be perfectly sure that 
their fulfillment is to take place at a particular time and 
in a particular way, and who is filled with earnest desire 
for social and religious reform, very easily passes over 
into a state in which he believes himself to be the recipi- 
ent of revelations as to the practical carrying out of the 
Divine purposes. The more one indulges in such pro- 
phetic exercises the more fanatical is he likely to become, 
especially if he finds a large number of people with like 
aspirations who are ready to receive his utterances as the 
revelation of God. Chiliasm of this fanatical type is 
likely to occur at any time when great revolutions are in 
progress; but in the case before us it is possible to find a 
historical connection with the past. Through Nicholas 
Storch the chiliasm of Munzer is historically connected 
with that of the Taborites of the preceding century, and 



86 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

this in turn doubtless had its antecedents in the earlier 
time, as in the chiliastic teaching of Militz of Kremsier 
and Matthias of Janow, in the fourteenth century, and 
in that of the heretical Franciscans of the thirteenth. 
Chiliasm is in its very nature fanatical, and if in particu- 
lar individuals or in particular times we find it existing 
in comparatively quiet and innocent form, this in no way 
invalidates the principle here set forth. 

So also we see in Miinzer's career a natural outcome 
of mysticism. The tendency of mysticism is toward the 
depreciation of the Scriptures and the exaltation of the 
authority of inner illumination. Sometimes it degen- 
erates into pantheistic self-identification of the subject 
with deity and the complete obliteration of moral dis- 
tinctions ; at other times it generates the delusion that 
its subject is possessed of prophetic powers, is the organ 
of divine revelation. Assuming this latter form in Storch 
and Miinzer, it produced, in connection with chiliasm, 
the disastrous results that have been noted. 

3. As has been made evident in the above discussion, 
neither Munzer nor Pfeiffer was a Baptist, or even an 
Anabaptist. Their denial of infant baptism as a scriptural 
ordinance was a wholly subordinate element in their 
teaching, and they continued to the last to practise it. 
There is no evidence, so far as we are aware, that either of 
those men either submitted to rebaptism or administered 
it to others. The identification of these fanatics with 
the Anabaptist cause in the minds of the leaders of the 
dominant parties of the time, was most damaging to the 
biblical Anti-pedobaptists, and caused them to be looked 
upon as capable of all the atrocities of the fanatics. 
The Storch-Miinzer movement had its natural develop- 
ment in the Miinster Kingdom of 1535, and not in the 
evangelical movement that beginning at Zurich spread 
rapidly throughout Europe and that before the outbreak 



REMARKS 87 

of the Peasants' War as well as afterward repudiated 
the sanguinary utterances of Miinzer. 

4. A most unfortunate result of the fanatical strivings 
of Storch and Miinzer was the complete reversal of 
Luther's programme of reform, and through Luther of 
that of the leading Protestant parties. Luther would no 
doubt have strenuously opposed a purely Baptist attempt 
to restore primitive Christianity ; but the effect of the 
movement we have considered was to embitter him 
against any type of reform that aimed to set up churches 
of the regenerate and that involved rupture with the 
State Church. From his point of view, the impractica- 
bility of the ideas of freedom of conscience and freedom 
of speech set forth with enthusiasm in his earlier writ- 
ings had been fully demonstrated. He counseled the 
most atrocious treatment of those who rebelled against 
constituted authority and could see nothing but disaster 
in any dissenting movement. Protestants and Catholics 
vied with each other in their efforts to destroy from the 
face of the earth those who were stigmatized as Anabap- 
tists and were supposed to be capable, whatever might 
be their professions and however quiet and holy might 
be their lives, of committing any sort of atrocity ; 
and whose presence in a State was looked upon as a 
menace to constituted authority. This feeling was in- 
tensified by the horrors of Miinster (1535), ten years 
after the Peasants' War. 



Literature: Works on the Peasants' War by Stern, Seidemann, 
Fries, Falkenheiner, Schreiber, Zimmermann, Jorg ; works on 
Miinzer, as in chap. V. ; histories of Germany in the Reformation 
time by Ranke and Janssen. 



CHAPTER VIII 

RADICAL AGITATION IN ZURICH AND IN WALDSHUT 
(1523-24) 

A RADICAL movement of a widely different type we 
meet in Switzerland from 1523 onward. A spirit 
of independence had been developed in Switzerland long 
before the outbreak of the Protestant Revolution. In 
place of the feudal system, with its serfs and petty lords, 
and the somewhat ill-defined subordination of the nobil- 
ity to the imperial government, which in Germany 
obstructed efforts at reform, a republican form of gov- 
ernment prevailed with entire independence of all for- 
eign authority. The extraordinary valor that had won 
their independence and enabled them to maintain it, 
caused the Swiss to be in great demand as mercenary 
soldiers. The pope, the emperor, and the king of France 
were the chief employers of Swiss troops. The mer- 
cenary system was not morally elevating either to the 
soldiers themselves or to the influential citizens who were 
pensioned by the foreign powers in consideration of their 
good offices. But it undoubtedly had the effect of 
destroying superstitious veneration for the church whose 
carnal battles they were hired to wage and of fostering 
freedom of thought. When in 15 18 the pope asked for 
twelve thousand Swiss troops to fight against the Turks, 
they somewhat reluctantly promised ten thousand, add- 
ing that if he liked he might take in addition the two 
thousand priests. The new learning had made its 
influence profoundly felt, especially in connection with 
the University of Basel. The mass of the people almost 
from the beginning of the Protestant movement showed 
88 



AGITATION IN ZURICH, ETC. 89 

a remarkable readiness to abandon the papal cause. 
There was no violent wrench in passing from nominal 
adherence to the papacy to a far more radical type of 
Protestantism than Luther ever thought it wise to intro- 
duce in Germany. 

Zwingli, the chief leader of the politico-ecclesiastical 
reforming movement in Switzerland, was a thorough- 
going Humanist, free from superstition and undue enthu- 
siasm, cool-headed, clear-headed, a good scholar, a good 
theologian, a skillful debater, an able administrative 
head. He aimed at political reform almost as much as 
at religious, and the practical statesman was in him quite 
as prominent as the theologian and the religious leader. 
While still living an immoral life he was led by his 
studies and by surrounding influences to reject the Roman 
Catholic system and to seek to base his teachings on the 
New Testament, which he studied with enthusiasm in 
Greek. By no sudden conversion, but by a quiet pro- 
cess, the truth so mastered him as to make him a compar- 
atively worthy religious leader. 

From 1 5 18 he labored so successfully in Zurich that 
by the beginning of 1523 the people were prepared to 
adopt radically anti-Catholic measures. This took place 
formally after a disputation called by the council. On 
this occasion Zwingli set forth and defended his views in 
sixty-seven articles, which the representative of the 
bishop of Constance was unable to refute. These articles 
were published with full explanatory notes shortly after- 
ward and may be regarded as the Swiss programme of 
reform. In the interpretation of the eighteenth article 
he calls attention to the fact that in the early church the 
baptism of infants was not so common as at present, 
catechetical instruction having preceded and baptism hav- 
ing been administered only after the catechumens had firm 
faith in the heart and had confessed with the mouth. 



90 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

He persistently denied that infants are saved by baptism 
or dying without baptism are lost. Still later he con- 
fessed : "The error also misled me some years ago, so 
that I thought it would be much more suitable to baptize 
children after they had arrived at a good age." He 
made the impression on those who afterward came out 
in open hostility to infant baptism, that he favored the 
abolition of this practice, which he acknowledged to 
have no scriptural authorization. 

Various practical reforms followed the first disputation. 
The sentiment against idolatrous objects in the churches 
and against the mass was intensified by the publication 
of a treatise on images and pictures by Ludwig Hetzer 
(a learned Hebraist, afterward associated with the Ana- 
baptists) and a treatise on the mass by Zwingli. To 
avoid lawless iconoclasm the council arranged a second 
disputation for October, 1523, in which Zwingli, Leo 
Judae, Hetzer, Conrad Grebel, and Balthasar Hubmaier 
(the last two to become eminent Anabaptist leaders), 
took part. The sentiment was unanimous in favor of 
thorough-going reform, and provision was made for pre- 
paring the people, especially in the rural districts, for the 
abolition of images and the mass. The people of Zurich 
grew so impatient that the council thought it advisable 
to order the destruction of images in June, 1524. It was 
not until April, 1525, that the mass was supplanted by a 
simple German service with communion under both 
kinds. 

Similar reforms, largely under Zwingli's counsel, were 
introduced in Basel, Berne, St. Gall, and other Swiss 
centers. At Basel, OEcolampadius, one of the most 
learned and liberal of the reformers, was at the head of 
the evangelical movement. Wilhelm Reublin, afterward 
a zealous Anabaptist leader, had preached to large 
audiences in Basel until 1522, when he was expelled for 



BALTHASAR HUBMAIER 9 1 

abetting the violation of an ecclesiastical fast on Palm 
Sunday. As preacher at St. Alban's Church he is said 
by a contemporary to have " interpreted the Scriptures 
so well that the like had never^ been heard before." At 
Berne John Haller and Berthold Haller were the evan- 
gelical leaders. They were less able than Zwingli and 
QEcolampadius, but were enlightened and tolerant and 
conducted the work with discretion and success. The 
evangelical leader at St. Gall was also the leading 
citizen, Dr. Joachim von Watt (Vadian), a learned lay- 
man of excellent spirit. 

Outside of Switzerland, but in close affiliation with the 
Swiss evangelical movement, reform was carried forward 
in Strasburg under the leadership of Capito and Bucer, 
and at Waldshut, in the Austrian Breisgau, Dr. Balthasar 
Hubmaier labored with zeal and success. Of the Stras- 
burg reformers, Capito was like-minded with QEcolam- 
padius, liberal, tolerant, and hospitable toward the perse- 
cuted and oppressed ; while Bucer was an ecclesiastical 
opportunist, ready to compromise or persecute as policy 
seemed to dictate. 

The reforming labors of Hubmaier at Waldshut are of 
special interest to us by reason of his remarkable abilities 
as scholar, thinker, pulpit orator, disputant, and organizer 
and leader of men ; and especially by reason of the fact 
that he devoted all these powers and life itself to the 
restoration of primitive Christianity. Born near Augs- 
burg, about 1480, he was educated in the University of 
Freiburg (1503 onward), where he enjoyed the friend- 
ship of the famous dialectician, Dr. John Eck, from whom 
he received the most distinguished praise. He is said to 
have become second only to Eck in dialectics. Having 
already attained to great distinction in the university he 
received his bachelor's degree in 15 12, and was probably 
ordained to the priesthood soon after his graduation. 



92 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Later, in the same year, he followed Eck to Ingolstadt, 
where the latter had accepted a professorship. 

Here Hubmaier was made pastor of a church belong- 
ing to the university and instructor in the theological fac- 
ulty. Through Eck's influence the doctor's degree was 
conferred upon him by the university shortly after his 
arrival. His extraordinary eloquence caused him to be 
sought for as preacher by the cathedral church of Regens- 
burg. This position he accepted much to the regret of 
his Ingolstadt admirers. In the spirit of his time he joined 
in a movement for the expulsion of the Jews already 
in progress, and assumed the care of the chapel erected 
on the site of a destroyed synagogue. Pretended mira- 
cles in connection with a shrine in this chapel attracted 
throngs of pilgrims. He encouraged the superstition for 
a time, but afterward recognized the evil involved and 
sought to abate it. His efforts to curb certain super- 
stitious practices somewhat strained his relations with the 
Regensburg authorities and he was glad in 1521 to accept 
a pastorate in Waldshut. Here, in his " little nest," he 
at once became exceedingly popular, being still scrupu- 
lously exact in conforming to the church ceremonial. 
He now began to study and expound the Pauline epistles 
and by 1522 he was reading Luther's writings with the 
, utmost interest. 

In June, 1522, he visited Basel where he met a num- 
ber of leading Humanists, including Busch, Glarean, and 
Erasmus. He noticed that at Basel the monasteries were 
being emptied and their inmates were marrying. In 
November he returned to Regensburg at the urgent 
entreaty of his friends and was well received by clergy 
and people. By this time he had adopted evangelical 
views, and he soon began to realize that he was out of 
sympathy with his surroundings. 

After a few months' stay he returned to Waldshut, 



PROCEEDINGS AGAINST HUBMAIER 93 

where the principal pastorate had been kept open for 
him. In May, 1523, he had a conference on infant bap- 
tism with Zwingli who "conceded to him that children 
should not be baptized before they are instructed in the 
faith." He also visited Vadian at St. Gall, with whom 
he entered into the most cordial relations. Returning to 
Waldshut he at once began to agitate for the abolition of 
the mass and of the idolatrous use of images. On the 
basis of Deut. 27, " Cursed be the man who makes a 
graven or molten image," he insisted upon the removal 
of all idolatrous objects from the churches. The mass 
he declared to be no sacrifice but the proclamation of the 
last will of Christ in which his bitter suffering and self- 
sacrifice are commemorated. It should be celebrated 
without unscriptural ceremonies in the vernacular and 
under both kinds. 1 These opinions he claimed to have 
drawn directly from Scripture. If he errs he is open to 
correction, but a heretic he will not be. 

The Waldshut clergy and aristocracy were unsympa- 
thetic and his proposed innovations were promptly re- 
ported to the Austrian authorities who soon began pro- 
ceedings for the expulsion of Hubmaier. The mayor and 
council repudiated the charge that Hubmaier had intro- 
duced false teaching or had been guilty of any act of 
disloyalty to the Austrian government, and refused either 
to expel or deliver up their favorite preacher. The 
people could scarcely be restrained from doing violence 
to the imperial commissaries who had come to demand his 
removal. 

Having been given a fortnight for the consideration of 
the matter, the council sent an apology to the Austrian 
authorities, probably drafted by Hubmaier himself. It 
was claimed that Hubmaier had repeatedly preached of 
the obedience due to the civil magistracy ; that he had 

1 /. e., both bread and wine should be distributed to communicants. 



94 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

only preached the pure gospel and that his expulsion 
could not be accomplished without uproar and division. 
They begged that the doctor be left in his place and that 
in any case he be not removed without a thorough inves- 
tigation of his doctrine before the proper authorities. By 
this time Hubmaier's position in Waldshutwas almost as 
strong as that of Zwingli in Zurich. The council refused 
to send him to Constance for examination before the 
bishop, and the people were ready to defend him with 
their lives. 

As a basis for the reformation of the Waldshut 
churches Hubmaier set forth (June, 1524) eighteen propo- 
sitions for the consideration of the clergy. In these he 
repudiates the whole ceremonial system of the Roman 
Church, including the use of candles, palms, and conse- 
crated water, fasts, monastic vows, masses for the dead, 
the veneration of images, pilgrimages, Latin services, 
canonical hours for prayer, etc. All doctrines that God 
himself has not planted must be rooted out. Only he is 
a priest who proclaims the word of God and only true 
priests should be supported by the people. Purgatory 
has been fabricated by those whose God is their belly. 
Who seeks it seeks the grave of Moses : he will never 
find it. He rejects the celibacy of the clergy and de- 
nounces idlers of all kinds, whoever they may be. 

The bishop of Constance and the Austrian authorities 
continued to insist on the suppression of "Lutheran" 
heresy, but so strongly had Hubmaier become entrenched 
in the affections of the people that in April he declined a 
recall to his old charge in Regensburg. He informed his 
Regensburg friends of the great change he had experi- 
enced in the past two years. He now curses all teaching 
and preaching that he formerly did in Regensburg and 
elsewhere, so far as it had not its foundation in the word 
of God. He warns them not to be misled into trusting in 



HUBMAIER AT SCHAFFHAUSEN 95 

the authority of councils. A single pious Christian 
woman knows more of the divine word than such red- 
cappers (cardinals) have any conception of. 

Harassed by the charges that the bishop of Constance 
continued to make and the necessity put upon the 
Waldshut authorities to repel them, and encouraged by 
reformatory measures that were being introduced at 
Zurich, in June, 1524, Hubmaier proposed to the assem- 
bled congregation the introduction of the desired changes 
in worship. Some of his best friends strongly objected 
to this course as inopportune and as sure to involve the 
city in the gravest difficulties. He promptly resigned his 
office, but the popular demand for his re-election was 
irresistible. Many believed that he had been especially 
ordained and sent of God to reform Waldshut and were 
ready to defend him with property and blood. The 
Catholic priests had come into such disfavor that they 
found it advisable to leave the city. The images were 
destroyed, a simple German service was introduced in 
place of the mass, and the Supper was celebrated under 
both kinds as a simple memorial act. He discouraged 
abstinence from flesh on Fridays and Saturdays and soon 
afterward showed his disapproval of sacerdotal celibacy 
by marrying Elsbeth Hugeline, who proved worthy of his 
love and who died a martyr's death. 

As might have been expected, the Austrian authorities 
now became still more peremptory in their demand for 
the extradition of Hubmaier and the restoration of the 
old regime. They hesitated for a long time to resort to 
extreme measures lest the Swiss should take the part of 
Waldshut and lest other expensive and troublesome com- 
plications should arise. The Waldshut officials insisted 
that Hubmaier was preaching the pure gospel and nothing 
but the gospel and could be induced by no threats to de- 
liver him up for punishment. The Austrian authorities 



96 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPT1SM 

resolved not only to get possession of the person of Hub- 
maier, but also to put him out of the way of causing fur- 
ther trouble. At last, when resistance was no longer 
possible and Hubmaier was in imminent danger of being 
seized, he escaped by night to Schaffhausen, Septem- 
ber 1, 1524. 

The Schaffhausen authorities, though well disposed, 
were put thereby in a most trying position. The Austrian 
authorities were strenuous in their demands for his 
extradition, and most of the cantons of the Swiss con- 
federacy had expressed the opinion that, according to the 
treaties then in force between the confederacy and 
Austria, extradition could not properly be refused. Hub- 
maier knew full well that extradition meant certain 
death, and he plead with the Schaffhausen authorities for 
protection for at least a short time, until the question at 
issue between the Austrian authorities and Waldshut 
should have been settled. 

It was during his sojourn in Schaffhausen that he wrote 
the most remarkable plea for liberty of conscience that 
the sixteenth century produced, " On Heretics and their 
Burners." Those are heretics who perversely strive 
against Scripture. The devil was the first of these when 
he said to Eve, " Thou shalt not surely die." Those 
also are heretics who obscure Scripture and interpret it 
otherwise than the Spirit requires and seek to compel 
others to believe such nonsense. Heretics are to be 
overcome by means of holy instruction, given n.ot conten- 
tiously but gently, although it is true Scripture contains 
indignation also. But this indignation of Scripture is 
truly a spiritual fire. If heretics will not yield to words 
of power or evangelical considerations they are to be left 
to their own condemnation. To God alone judgment be- 
longs and he will either convert them or harden them so 
that the blind leading the blind both the perverted and 



HUBMAIER ON LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE 97 

the perverters shall be led to ruin. So Christ intended 
when he said, " Let both grow together until the har- 
vest." This does not mean, however, that we should 
be idle, but rather that we should strive against godless 
doctrines instead of seeking to destroy those who teach 
them. Unfaithful bishops are the cause of the incoming 
of false teaching, for while men slept the enemy came 
and sowed the tares. He who watches before the bride- 
groom's door neither slumbers nor sits in the seat of the 
scornful. The greatest arch-heretics are those who 
against Christ's teaching and example condemn heretics 
to the flames and before the time of the harvest destroy 
wheat and tares together ; for Christ did not come to 
butcher, to murder, to burn, but that men might have 
life and that more abundantly. So long as a man lives 
we should pray and hope for his repentance. A Turk or 
a heretic is to be overcome not with sword or fire but by 
patience and weeping. We are therefore to wait patiently 
for the judgment of God. As thus violating the spirit 
and the teaching of the gospel, the preaching orders, who 
were the leaders of the Inquisition, are declared to be the 
producers of arch-heretics. If such knew of what spirit 
they should be they would not so shamelessly pervert 
God's word nor so often cry out, " To the fire ! " It is no 
excuse that they deliver their victims for execution to 
the godless secular power. Nay, in this they sin still 
more grievously. Every Christian has a sword against 
the godless, that is, the word of God ; but not a sword 
against evil-doers. The civil power has a right to execute 
evil-doers, but the godless God alone should punish ; for 
such can injure neither body nor soul, but are useful 
rather ; for God knows how to bring good out of evil. 
For true faith thrives by conflict ; the more it is opposed 
the greater it becomes. To burn heretics is to confess 
Christ in appearance but to deny him in reality, and is 

G 



98 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

more abominable than Joachim king of Judah. If it be 
a great abomination to destroy those who are really here- 
tics how much greater to burn to ashes the true preach- 
ers of God's word before they have been confuted with 
the truth. Those who would attempt to improve upon 
God's commands are like Uzzah and Peter. When Je- 
hoiakim destroyed the book of Jeremiah, Baruch wrote a 
better one. He concludes, " Now it is manifest to every 
one, even to the blind, that the law for the burning of 
heretics was devised by the devil. The truth is im- 
mortal." 

His presence in Schaffhausen became more and more 
embarrassing to the authorities and insecure for himself. 
Besides, circumstances had somewhat changed at Walds- 
hut. His withdrawal had in no way appeased the Aus- 
trian authorities, who despite the earnest pleadings of 
the people for mercy, their protestations of loyalty, and 
their expressed willingness to make any reasonable repa- 
ration for their past offenses, continued to threaten them 
with the direst punishment and refused to accept any 
terms short of absolute surrender. 

It is noteworthy that even with the terrible wrath of 
Austria before their eyes the Waldshut authorities were 
loyal to Hubmaier and could not be led to admit that he 
had preached anything but the pure gospel. Their insist- 
ence on the purity of Hubmaier's teaching constituted in 
fact the gravamen of their offense. Waldshut had be- 
come thoroughly evangelical, and it would not do for the 
Catholic Austrian government to give any quarter to 
heresy. Other towns and provinces would soon follow 
this evil example if Waldshut should go unpunished, 
Yet grave difficulties stood in the way of the immediate 
execution of the vengeance meditated and threatened. 
The growth of evangelical sentiment in the neighboring 
Swiss cantons and the peasant uprising in Swabia and 



HUBMAIER'S RETURN TO WALDSHUT 99 

upper Alsace made it probable that any attempt to punish 
Waldshut would be resented and strongly resisted. The 
intercession of the Zurich Council, while it no doubt had 
the effect of causing the Austrian authorities to hesitate 
to execute the threatened punishment, confirmed the sus- 
picion of heresy. 

Preparations had been made for the assembling of an 
army of twelve thousand troops for the occupation of 
Waldshut about October 15. The timely intervention of 
Zurich, which decided to send a small contingent of well- 
armed troops to the succor of Waldshut, caused a post- 
ponement of the invasion. The Swiss succor was not 
confined to the troops sent and paid by the Zurich 
authorities, but a number of earnest Christians seeing 
their Waldshut brethren in extreme danger, without 
commission and without pay, came to the rescue. The 
Zurich authorities wavered after permitting the troops to 
depart and sent couriers to recall them. They answered 
that they would die sooner than return. The succor re- 
luctantly and waveringly afforded by Zurich had a far 
greater moral influence on the Austrian authorities than 
it was really entitled to exert ; for it was reported to 
them that the Zurich Council had promised six thousand 
troops, and six thousand Swiss troops were by no means 
to be despised. Basel and Schaffhausen also had shown 
a disposition to intervene in case the Austrian authorities 
should proceed to extremities. 

Hubmaier returned to Waldshut, apparently with the 
approval of the authorities, on October 28, and was re- 
ceived with the beating of drums and the blowing of 
fifes and horns "just as if he had been an emperor." 
On November 2 representatives of Zurich, Schaffhausen, 
and Basel, through special invitation of the Austrian 
authorities, appeared with representatives of Waldshut 
at a diet of the regency, to seek for an amicable adjust- 



100 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

ment of the Waldshut difficulties. The Waldshut del- 
egates, encouraged by the interest taken in their cause 
by their Swiss friends, now somewhat insolently de- 
manded not only immunity from punishment and entire 
religious freedom, but indemnity for the losses sustained 
in preparing for defense. 

The Austrians would make no further concession than 
to leave the fixing of the civil penalty to four neighbor- 
ing Austrian cities. They required the immediate re- 
moval of the evangelical preachers and of the Swiss con- 
tingent of troops. No result was reached, but it was ar- 
ranged to continue the negotiations at a diet in Rheins- 
felden on November 15. The Waldshut representatives 
now expressed a willingness to make amends for their 
past offenses by paying a reasonable fine, but insisted to 
the last on religious freedom. This the Austrians refused 
to accord and threatened to carry out the forcible 
measures that had long been purposed. Yet nothing was 
attempted for some time. The Swiss yielded to the 
Austrian demand and withdrew their contingent of troops 
from Waldshut, December 4, 1524. 

There was general rejoicing in evangelical circles that 
Waldshut had been saved without making any compro- 
mise in fidelity to the truth. Bucer wrote to Zwingli, 
October 31, "I confidently expect that the example of 
the Waldshuters will encourage very many. To me the 
affair is like a miracle. Truly the Lord has lifted up the 
humble." Hubmaier soon resumed his office as chief 
pastor, and he did not hesitate when danger threatened 
to lay aside his clerical habit and to take his place in 
battle array among the soldiers. Such willingness to 
take his full share of the work of defending the city no 
doubt added to his already great popularity. 

In the meantime, however, the question of infant bap- 
tism had come to the front in Zurich and the surrounding 



PARTIES AT ZURICH 101 

regions. Apart from those who continued loyal to the 
Roman Church, three parties, or at least three attitudes 
toward reform, may be distinguished in this city. The 
magistracy as a body were exceedingly conservative, 
and while they early came to feel the need of a certain 
amount of reform sought to reduce innovation to a mini- 
mum. Only after they had become convinced that it 
was impolitic longer to delay any particular item of re- 
form could they be induced to give their sanction to it. 
So politic had been their proceedings that as late as 1526 
they were still on friendly terms with the pope, who was 
heavily indebted to the council for troops furnished some 
years before and who in response to persistent solicita- 
tions made repeated promises to pay. He could still 
address the council as "beloved sons," and while he 
mildly remonstrated with them for tolerating heresy had 
not yet thought it expedient to excommunicate even such 
leaders as Zwingli. 

Zwingli represented the middle party, that wished to 
carry forward reform as fast as it could be done with 
safety. It was with great difficulty that Zwingli could 
secure and maintain the co-operation of the council in 
such reforms as he thought desirable. In his dealings 
with the council he displayed political capacity of a high 
order. His lack of consuming zeal and of excessive 
scrupulosity stood him well in hand in his semi-political 
career. 

Almost from the beginning of the evangelical move- 
ment in Zurich we notice a number of radicals who 
always went ahead of what Zwingli and the council 
thought it prudent to allow, breaking fasts before they 
had been authoritatively abolished, destroying images 
before their removal had been ordered, refusing to par- 
ticipate in the mass and speaking of it contemptuously 
while its celebration was still required by the authorities. 



102 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Zwingli had denied that under the gospel dispensation 
tithes are binding, and was of the opinion that rents 
should be so adjusted as to be less oppressive to the 
workingman. The radicals did not hesitate to declare 
the enforced payment of tithes tyrannical, and to make 
their protest practical by refusing to pay them and by 
holding meetings for the free discussion of agrarian griev- 
ances. When there was talk of sending Zwingli to 
Constance for examination before the ecclesiastical 
authorities the radicals arranged for a monster meeting 
to protest and if necessary to take active measures 
against such interference with freedom of evangelical 
teaching. 

Among the earliest and most aggressive of these radi- 
cals were Simon Stumpf, pastor at Hongg, Froschauer, a 
printer, afterward to become widely known as Hubmaier's 
publisher at Nikolsburg, Claus and Jacob Hottinger, 
Heine Aberli, Andreas Castelberg (usually called An- 
dreas-on-the-Crutches), among the less educated ; and 
among the educated Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, Wil- 
helm Reublin, Ludwig Hetzer, Georg Blaurock, and 
Hans Brotli. 

In June, 1523, we find the Hottingers raising a com- 
motion at Zollikon by insisting on communion under 
both kinds. In September we find Claus Hottinger, 
Hochriitiner, and others, arraigned before the council 
for lawless iconoclasm and sentenced to banishment. 1 

Zwingli's refusal to insist upon the immediate abolition 
of images and the mass was highly offensive to the radi- 
cals. Grebel, Manz, Stumpf, and others, had repeated 
conferences with him and demanded the setting up of a 
pure church, whose members should all be true children 

1 Hottinger went to Bade.n, where he was arrested for heresy and delivered over 
to the Swiss deputies at Lucerne, who sentenced him to death for heresy. He died 
heroically. See Bullinger, " Reformationgeschichte," Bd. I., p. 145, seq. 



ZWINGLI'S OPPOSITION 103 

of God, having the spirit of God and ruled and led by 
him. They pointed out the unseemliness of making the 
reformation of the church dependent upon the will of an 
ungodly magistracy, and of allowing the ungodly to 
enjoy the privileges of church-fellowship. Zwingli urged 
them to be patient with "the feeble sick lambs," and 
sought scriptural support for his position in the account 
of the ark which contained both clean and unclean 
beasts, and in the parable of the wheat and the tares. 
The magistrates, while they may not all be true believ- 
ers, are yet friendly to the gospel and should not be 
violently opposed. He warned them earnestly of the 
disastrous consequences of separation and schism. 
The warning was without avail, and Stumpf, whose 
revolutionary preaching reminds one of that of Munzer, 
was banished about the end of 1523. 

After Zwingli had declared himself definitely against 
the establishment of churches of the regenerate and the 
immediate abolition of all unscriptural elements, the 
radicals lost confidence in him as a reformer and began 
to plan for the independent organization of New Testa- 
ment churches. They met together frequently at 
Manz' home, where they read Hebrew together and 
discussed the ways and means of putting into practice 
their ideas of reform. In fact it appears that as early 
as 1522 Castelberg had held private meetings for the 
expounding of the Epistle to the Romans, and the free 
discussion of the religious questions of the time. Cas- 
telberg's views were largely socialistic. He did not 
hesitate to denounce usury as theft, and the oppression 
of the poor by the rich as murder. Warfare also he did 
not hesitate to denounce as equivalent to murder. From 
the early date at which Castelberg began his religio- 
socialistic agitation and the similarity of his views to 
those of mediaeval evangelical parties it is not improba- 



104 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

ble that we have in his activity a point of contact between 
the earlier and the later radical movements. 



Literature : Pertinent works (as in Bibliography) of Egli, Strickler, 
Heberle, Strasser, Nitsche, Burrage, Schaff, Baur, Keller, Usteri, 
Stahelin, E. Miiller, Loserth, Kessler, Gast, Bullinger, Fiisslin, 
Beck, Cornelius, Hosek, Schreiber, Zwingli, and Hubmaier. 



CHAPTER IX 
ZURICH, SCHAFFHAUSEN, AND ST. GALL (i 524-25) 

The question of infant baptism was first brought prom- 
inently forward by Wilhelm Reublin in the spring 
of 1524. As pastor at Wytikon, while not refusing to 
baptize such infants as were presented, he had expressed 
himself against infant baptism. If he had a child he 
would not baptize it until it should come to its days and 
could personally choose godfather and godmother. As a 
result of such teaching many withheld their children 
from baptism. A number of such were arraigned before 
the council and commanded to have their children bap- 
tized without delay. Reublin was thrown into prison 
and a fine was imposed upon parents who should refuse 
to obey the mandate. Largely through Reublin's in- 
fluence the sentiment against infant baptism had 
extended to Zollikon, where many violated the order of 
the council for conscience' sake. Hans Brotli, pastor at 
Zollikon, Andreas Castelberg, Georg Blaurock, Con- 
rad Grebel, and Felix Manz now declared themselves 
against infant baptism. After a number of private con- 
ferences between Zwingli and the opponents of infant 
baptism, in which the latter complained of unfair treat- 
ment at the hands of the former, the council arranged for 
a public disputation to be held January 17, 1525. The 
chief disputants on the Anti-pedobaptist side were Grebel, 
Manz, and Reublin. The usual arguments for and against 
infant baptism were ably stated. Zwingli had by this 
time come to feel the importance of pedobaptism as a 
necessary concomitant of a State church. It had not 
occurred to him at first that the abolition of infant bap- 

105 



106 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

tism would involve the setting up of churches composed 
exclusively of baptized believers and the unchurching of 
the great mass of the population in each community. 
Such separatism, he was sure, could never secure the 
approval of the magistracy. Persecution would ensue 
and evangelical Christianity would have to give way to 
more politic Romanism. When these consequences had 
once dawned upon him he devoted all the energies of his 
being to the maintenance of the existing order. 

The Anti-pedobaptist leaders, as was natural, bitterly 
charged Zwingli with inconsistency and with insincerity. 
Inconsistent he surely was, but it is entirely conceivable 
that his change of opinion was real. His opposition to 
infant baptism had never been based on profound con- 
viction of its pernicious character. He had never gone 
much beyond the feeling that it was non-scriptural and 
useless. He was of a wholly different spirit from the 
Anti-pedobaptist leaders and was completely out of har- 
mony with their plans and purposes. It is not improb- 
able that he actually succeeded in convincing himself of 
the defensibility of a practice so essential to civil and 
ecclesiastical order. His chief argument was based upon 
the practical identity of baptism with circumcision. He 
did not fail to call attention to the possibility that among 
the households baptized in the apostolic times there may 
have been infants, nor to the fact that the children 
of believers are spoken of by the apostle as holy. 
" Children are with their parents in God's covenant, 
they belong as their parents to God's church, and hence 
are also God's children. Should water baptism be 
denied to those who are God's children? " 

The council, as might have been expected, declared 
Zwingli victorious, commanded that all unbaptized chil- 
dren be baptized within eight days on pain of the ban- 
ishment of the responsible parties, required the abandon- 



PEDOBAPTISM ENFORCED IO7 

ment of all special meetings for the discussion of bap- 
tism and like questions, and banished such foreigners as 
had become prominent in the Anti-pedobaptist move- 
ment. This last ordinance involved Reublin, Brbtli, 
Hetzer, and Castelberg. 

From this time onward the radicals became more and 
more aggressive. They at once proceeded to intro- 
duce believers' baptism (about the middle of December, 
1524). 1 In this Grebel led, baptizing first of all Blau- 
rock, who in turn baptized large numbers. On February 
7 fourteen Anti-pedobaptists from Zollikon were arraigned 
before the council, among them two members of the 
Hottinger family, who confessed that they had been bap- 
tized and expressed their resolution to act henceforth 
according to the directions of God's Spirit and to be de- 
terred therefrom by no worldly power. 

Riiedi Thomann gave an account of a meeting in his 
own house in which Brotli, Reublin, and Blaurock took 
part. After much conversation and reading, Hans Brugg- 
bach stood up weeping and crying out that he was a 
great sinner and asking that they pray God for him. 
Then Blaurock asked him whether he desired the grace 
of God. He said he did. Then Manz rose and said 
"Who will forbid that I should baptize him? " Blaurock 
answered, "No one." Then Manz took a dipper with 
water and baptized him in the name of the Father, Son, 
and Holy Spirit. Then stood up Jacob Hottinger. Him 
also Manz baptized. Then the others all went away and 
Manz and Blaurock remained with him over night. They 
rose early the next morning. Then Blaurock said to his 
son-in-law : ■ ' Marx, you have hitherto been a gay young 
man. You must make a change. You must put away 



1 So Nitsche, " Schw. Wiedertaufer," p. 29, seq. ; and Egli, " St. Galler Taufer," p. 
22. Usteri, "Huldreich Zwingli," Bd. I., p. 478, thinks the latter part of January, 1525, 
the more probable date. Absolute certainty in this matter is at present unattainable. 



108 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

the old Adam and put on a new." Marx answered 
"that he would do his best." Then Blaurock asked 
whether he desired the grace of God, and when he said 
that he did, Blaurock said : " Come hither and I will 
baptize you also." Then Marx went to him and was 
baptized. Then Blaurock said to him (Riiedi Thomann), 
that he was an old man and near to death and that he 
should amend his life, and said that if he desired the 
grace of God he would baptize him too. And when he 
said that he did, Blaurock baptized him. After this Blau- 
rock would have no rest until he had baptized the whole 
household. He related further, how they had a loaf 
upon the table and Blaurock said : " Whoever believes 
that God has redeemed him with his death and his rose- 
colored blood, let him come and eat with me of the bread 
and drink with me of this wine." Then they ate and 
drank. This is a fair sample of the methods employed 
by these zealous men in propagating their principles. 
Considering the universal discontent of the working 
classes it is not wonderful that within a few weeks thou- 
sands had accepted the simple gospel thus earnestly pro- 
claimed and were baptized on profession of their faith. 

After the prisoners mentioned above had been detained 
for a time and Zwingli and his associates had striven to 
convince them of their errors, they were heavily fined 
and dismissed, a special injunction having been put upon 
the leaders not to engage further in holding unlawful 
meetings, baptizing, or celebrating the Lord's Supper. 
As might have been expected they went forward with 
their work more zealously than before. Their opinion of 
Zwingli was not improved by his efforts to convert them. 
Blaurock, Manz, and Hans Hottinger were obstinate in 
their heresy, and seem to have been held for further 
discipline. At any rate we find them in prison a short 
time afterward. 



INCREASING SEVERITY 109 

In a letter to the council (written shortly before Feb- 
ruary 18), Blaurock sets forth his views and aims in a 
simple, earnest way. Christ in sending forth his dis- 
ciples commanded them to go forth and teach all peoples 
and promised remission of sins through the power given 
by God his Father to all who should call upon his name, 
and for an external sign commanded them to baptize. 
As he has taught, some have come to him weeping and 
begging to be baptized. Such he has not felt at liberty 
to refuse, but after instructing them further as regards 
love, unity, and community of all things, as did the 
apostles (according to Acts 2), he has baptized them, and 
that they might always keep in remembrance the death 
of Christ and his poured-out blood he has instructed 
them how Christ instituted the Supper, and they have 
together broken the bread and drunk the wine, in com- 
memoration of the fact that they were all redeemed by 
the one body of Christ and washed by the one blood of 
Christ, and that all might be brothers and sisters of each 
other in Christ their Lord. In all this he feels assured 
that he has done the will of God. He beseeches the 
council not to come in conflict with the corner-stone, 
Christ. 

Blaurock and Manz were firm in the position they had 
taken. Their teaching and practice they held to be in 
accord with God's will, and they demanded scriptural 
proof for infant baptism. Manz desired that Zwingli 
should express his views in writing, and promised writ- 
ten answers to his arguments. Blaurock expressed the 
opinion that Zwingli perverted the Scriptures more vio- 
lently than the old pope. Further conference with 
Zwingli tended in no way to bring him and the Anti-pedo- 
baptists to a better understanding. Their conceptions 
and aims had diverged so widely that reconciliation was 
utterly hopeless. We soon find Blaurock in Zollikon, 



110 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

preaching to a large congregation and baptizing. Here 
he baptized Heine Aberli, whom we have already encoun- 
tered among the earlier radicals. 

Finding milder measures unavailing and alarmed at the 
increasing aggressiveness of the Anti-pedobaptists, the 
council decided to examine Aberli and others, imposed a 
fine upon all who had submitted to rebaptism since Feb- 
ruary 7, and decreed the immediate banishment, with 
wife and child, of all who should henceforth do so. A 
thorough investigation of the Anti-pedobaptist disturb- 
ances at Zollikon was ordered. It was decided on March 
16 to imprison all the suspects and to examine them on 
the eighteenth. A large number were arraigned and full 
records of the examination have been preserved. Hans 
Hottinger refused to receive instruction from any one but 
Christ. He knows not whether he was baptized in 
childhood, therefore he has had himself baptized. Many 
relate the circumstances under which they were brought 
to feel their need of baptism and were baptized. The 
brethren at Zollikon pleaded earnestly for liberty to follow 
God's word. No opinions or thoughts that are not based 
upon Scripture will move them in the slightest degree. 
They ask for a public disputation on baptism. 

A disputation was arranged between Zwingli, Leo 
Judae, and Myconius, on the one side, and Blaurock and 
Manz on the other, before members of the council (March 
20). The result was as usual. The council exhorted the 
Anti-pedobaptists to desist, assuring them that their sepa- 
ration and schism could be no longer endured. Foreign- 
ers were banished and natives were to be imprisoned on 
a bread and water diet, in the hope that they would be 
led by their sufferings and the prospect of starvation to 
abandon their errors. The starvation argument proved 
more effective by far than Zwingli's logic and exegesis. 
On March 25 a number promised to abandon their Ana- 



HOFMEISTER'S POSITION III 

baptist teachings and practices and were released. 
Zwingli was too shrewd to be misled by this temporary 
compliance on the part of the weaker brethren. "We 
have accomplished nothing," he writes, " although some 
have desisted, not because they have changed their mind, 
but because they have changed their nerve." 1 

Blaurock and his companions continued in prison. 
Whether by accident or by friendly human interven- 
tion, the prisoners discovered (about April 5) that one 
of the windows was unfastened. After some hesitation 
they decided that the opportunity to escape was provi- 
dential and let themselves down by a rope. Among 
those who escaped were Grebel, Manz, and Blaurock. 
The precise date of Grebel's imprisonment cannot be 
determined. No mention of him is made in connection 
with the disputation of March 20, or the recantation of 
part of the prisoners and the refusal of others on March 
25. He was probably arrested shortly before April 5/ 

When Reublin and Brotli were banished from the can- 
ton of Zurich, they seem to have directed their steps at 
once to the canton of Schaffhausen. Grebel soon fol- 
lowed and labored faithfully in that field. We have seen 
that this canton was the sanctuary of Hubmaier when 
he was being hotly pursued by the Austrian authorities. 
The principal ecclesiastical personage in Schaffhausen 
was Dr. Sebastian Hofmeister. He received the ban- 
ished Anabaptists with Christian hospitality, and listened 
patiently and sympathetically to their Anti-pedobaptist 

»" Opera," Lib. VII., p. 398. 

2 There is considerable difficulty about fixing the dates of Grebel's movements at 
this time. According to Kessler ("Sabbata," Bd. I., pp. 266, 268) Grebel reached St. 
Gall March 26, and remained there until after Palm Sunday (April 9). This is of 
course inconsistent with the supposition that he escaped from prison at Zurich on 
April 5. That he was among the prisoners who escaped there can be no doubt. In a 
letter to Vadian, March 31, Zwingli mentions the fact that Grebel is at Zurich, but 
does not refer to his imprisonment (" Opera," Lib. VII., p. 387). It would seem that 
Kessler's dates are incorrect. 



112 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

arguments. Brotli wrote to his friends at Zollikon : 
" Dr. Sebastian agrees with us as regards baptism. 
God grant that he may come to a better understanding 
in all things." Hubmaier quotes a letter from Hofmeister 
which leaves no doubt that for a time at least he rejected 
infant baptism not only in theory but in practice as well. 
Having apologized to Hubmaier for not communicating to 
him earlier his opinion on baptism, and having expressed 
his anxiety lest disunion should grow out of the contro- 
versy that has arisen, he continues : 

However, it pleased the Heavenly Father that without me the 
matter came into dispute, so that it spread as far as to us, and there- 
fore for the sake of the truth we have not been ashamed to publicly 
confess it before the council in Schaffhausen, that our brother 
Zwingli is erring from the right way and is not proceeding accord- 
ing to the gospel, if he determines that little children should be bap- 
tized. 1 have certainly not allowed myself to be compelled to bap- 
tize my children, and therefore you do what is exactly Christian 
when you introduce again now the true baptism of Christ, that had 
so long been neglected. 

It is probable that Hofmeister had been brought to 
this position by the arguments of Hubmaier during the 
sojourn of the latter in Schaffhausen. But he lacked the 
courage of his convictions, as will hereafter more fully 
appear. 

Brotli after visiting a number of places in the canton 
of Schaffhausen settled at Hallau, where his preaching 
met with marked acceptance. Reublin spent part of the 
time with him and baptized many in Hallau, but his 
work was rather that of an evangelist. With untiring 
zeal he traveled from place to place winning multitudes. 
Of Grebel's activity in Schaffhausen at this time we 
have no particulars, except as regards his intercourse 
with Dr. Hofmeister and other leaders. Hofmeister some 
months later gave to Zwingli and the Zurich Council an 



HOFMEISTER'S BANISHMENT 1 13 

account of his intercourse with Grebel that is conceived 
in an unfriendly spirit and seems out of keeping with his 
earlier attitude. He states that he did not agree with 
Grebel as to infant baptism. Grebel had insisted that in 
no other way could the papacy be more effectively 
brought low than by the abolition of infant baptism. 
He had also insisted that beneficed clergymen could not 
rightly proclaim the truth. He had denounced Zwingli 
as an adulterer and had charged him with desiring to put 
him and his associates to death. A certain French 
knight had been present as a guest of Hofmeister's and 
had conceived a highly unfavorable opinion of Zwingli 
as portrayed by Grebel ; but he resolved to visit Zwingli 
and to ascertain the truth. The result was that his ill 
impression was removed. Grebel had said, moreover, 
that Leo Judae and Caspar Grossmann were likewise of 
his opinion, but were overawed by Zwingli. Felix Manz 
had also been to Schaffhausen to seek to gain adherents 
to his party. He had taken strong ground not only 
against infant baptism, but also against the right of a 
Christian to exercise magistracy or to engage in warfare. 
The visits of Grebel and Manz to Schaffhausen re- 
ferred to by Hofmeister must have occurred after the 
escape from the tower on April 5, as Grebel is repre- 
sented as referring to the escape as due to a special 
divine interposition, and Manz had been for some time in 
prison previous to the deliverance. 

The explanation of Hoffmeister's changed attitude 
toward Anabaptist principles is to be found in the follow- 
ing facts, recorded in the Schaffhausen "Chronicle." 
The Schaffhausen authorities became greatly alarmed on 
account of certain riotous outbreaks in sympathy with 
the peasant uprising in the neighboring countries, and 
Dr. Hofmeister paid dearly for the sympathy he had 
manifested for Anti-pedobaptist views. He was accused 

H 



114 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPT1SM 

by his opponents of having spoken of the mass as idols' 
bread, idolatry, the work of the devil, etc., and of hav- 
ing publicly taught that the baptism of young children is 
useless and should be abandoned. So sensitive and 
timid had the council become, that instead of arranging 
for an examination of the honored pastor at home and 
giving him an opportunity to defend or explain his teach- 
ings, as he earnestly requested, they peremptorily ordered 
him to leave the city and not to approach within three 
miles of it until he could present a certificate of ortho- 
doxy from some university. Hofmeister was not a man 
of heroic cast and this requirement was to the last de- 
gree humiliating to him. Whither he should direct his 
way he knew not. He finally decided to solicit the good 
offices of the University of Basel, as being near at hand 
and friendly to evangelical teaching ; but he found that 
owing to the same circumstances that had led to his ban- 
ishment from Schaffhausen the Basel authorities were 
in a supersensitive state and would have nothing to do 
with him. Greatly cast down, he resolved to return to 
Schaffhausen and to seek to satisfy the authorities as to 
his orthodoxy. But the council was inexorable. This 
decree of banishment affected also his chief colleague, 
Dr. Sebastian Meier. He now made his way to Zurich, 
determined it would seem to purge himself of all sus- 
picion of sympathy with the Anabaptists. 

One of the most important events in Grebel's Schaff- 
hausen ministry was the baptism of Wolfgang Uolimann, 
a well-educated and zealous evangelical teacher from St. 
Gall. Uolimann, like Blaurock, had been a Prasmonstra- 
tensian monk. After leaving his monastery at Chur he 
entered zealously upon evangelical work at St. Gall. 
He had reached the conviction that New Testament bap- 
tism was the immersion of the believer, and he was not 
content to have water poured or sprinkled upon him 



AGITATION AT ST. GALL 115 

from a dish, but insisted upon being immersed in the 
river, a practice which Grebel seems afterward to have 
followed at St. Gall. 

St. Gall now became the chief Swiss center of the 
Anabaptist movement. In this important manufacturing 
town the trades-unions were powerful and used their 
influence for the promotion of evangelical teaching. 
Vadian, a graduate and former rector of the University 
of Vienna, a scholar of high rank and a doctor of medi- 
cine, was the most influential citizen of St. Gall. He 
early declared himself in favor of evangelical reform and 
sustained the most cordial relations with Zwingli. Chiefly 
through the influence of his brother-in-law, Conrad 
Grebel, he was led to give attention to the baptismal 
question and to sympathize with those who denied the 
scriptural authority of infant baptism ; but he urged that 
nothing be done rashly. In its own good time the doc- 
trine and practice of baptism would be made right. 
Grebel earnestly besought him to take a decided stand, 
but his conservative instincts and the influence of 
Zwingli determined him to oppose the radicals. His 
strong disinclination to the use of compulsion in matters 
of religion and the prevailing popular sentiment in favor 
of radical reform gave opportunity for the Anabaptist 
movement to gain a momentum here that was not possi- 
ble at Zurich or elsewhere in Switzerland. 

Laurence Hochriitiner, when banished from Zurich in 
1523, returned to his native St. Gall. Here he became 
a leader of the radical party among the working people. 
He soon declared himself against infant baptism and 
gained many adherents. John Kessler returned from a 
course of study in Basel and Wittenberg in November, 
1523, and instead of seeking ordination worked at the 
saddler's trade and held meetings for the expounding of 
the Scriptures, at first in a private house but afterward 



Il6 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

in the hall of one of the guilds. When Kessler was ex- 
pounding the sixth chapter of Romans, Hochrutiner 
objected to his interpretation of the passage about bap- 
tism, and insisted upon the Baptist view of the apostle's 
teaching. A long letter from Grebel on the subject was 
industriously used by Hochriitiner. The conservative 
element secured the prohibition of Kessler's meetings in 
September, 1524. He yielded for the time in the interest 
of peace ; but the more radical evangelicals insisted that 
the word of God is not bound and that we must obey 
God rather then men. On Uolimann's arrival he was 
invited by the radicals to take up the work. He preached 
out of doors to large congregations, who as winter 
approached grew indignant that the churches were closed 
against the evangelical preacher. 

Agitation resulted in compromise. Only priests could 
officiate in the churches ; lay meetings must remain pri- 
vate, the council neither permitting nor forbidding ; yet 
permission was granted to Kessler to expound the Scrip- 
tures in one of the churches, while Uolimann being sus- 
pected of extreme radicalism was refused the use of an- 
other and held his meetings in the weavers' hall. Having 
been baptized by Grebel (as already stated) in the spring 
of 1 525, he returned to St. Gall. The breach in the evan- 
gelical ranks, long imminent, was now consummated. 
Uolimann began at once to baptize on a profession of 
faith. As Kessler observed, "The St. Gall people ran 
after baptism as the Galatians after circumcision." 

Grebel came to the support of Uolimann and Hoch- 
riitiner in April and his popular power was nowhere 
more manifest than here. He seems to have brought 
with him two other enthusiastic Anabaptist workers, 
Anthony Roggenacher and Hippolytus Eberle. The 
latter especially proved himself a man of high character 
and of great popular power. Crowd after crowd went 



UOLIMANN AND GREBEL 117 

out of the city for baptism in the flowing water. In some 
cases tubs or vats were used. 

The Anti-pedobaptist excitement spread into the sur- 
rounding villages in the abbot's domains and in the Ap- 
penzell territory. Within a few weeks one thousand two 
hundred were baptized. The Anti-pedobaptists had strong 
supporters in the council and their opponents were not 
in a position to deal summarily with them. Three 
churches were formed in Appenzell. At Teufen the 
pastor of the church was supplanted by an Anti-pedobap- 
tist. 

The highest praise is bestowed on the purity and sim- 
plicity of the lives of these people by contemporary 
writers who abhorred their schismatic principles. Con- 
sidering the intense excitement that must have accom- 
panied changes so rapid and radical, it is remarkable that 
so little occurred that could in any sense be regarded as 
fanatical. Eberle left St. Gall at the request of the 
burgomaster in the interest of peace. He soon afterward 
suffered martyrdom at Schwyz, whither information had 
been sent by his opponents, who did not dare lay hands 
on him in St. Gall. 

Uolimann again came to the front as the leader of the 
Anti-pedobaptists of the canton. He was brought before 
the council on April 25, and gave an intelligent account 
of his position, showing a creditable acquaintance with 
the history of the doctrine of baptism. It was agreed 
that the council should in the near future arrange for a 
disputation in which both sides should be fully stated and 
argued. "For the sake of brotherly love," Uolimann 
agreed to discontinue baptism and the celebration of the 
Supper until after the proposed disputation. The Anti- 
pedobaptists might in the meantime continue their 
preaching and teaching. It seems to have been a grave 
error in judgment on the part of Uolimann to agree to a 



Il8 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

temporary suspension of the administration of the 
ordinances. It destroyed the enthusiasm of the move- 
ment and gave to its opponents the desired opportunity 
to mature their arrangements for its suppression. 

Zwingli was urging upon the St. Gall authorities the 
necessity of taking decisive measures, and he wrought 
night and day in preparing his great work on " Baptism, 
Anabaptism, and Infant Baptism," with special reference 
to the needs of St. Gall. It was published May 27. 
Grebel wrote a most passionate appeal to Vadian, his 
brother-in-law, beseeching him not to allow himself to 
be influenced by worldly considerations to attempt any- 
thing against the gospel, but rather to withdraw from the 
bloodthirsty party of Zwingli. If he will not put him- 
self on the side of the brethren, he is entreated at least 
not to persecute them. This letter (or a similar one) 
was read before the council and strongly disapproved 
by the majority. It was ordered that Zwingli's recently 
issued book be publicly read in one of the churches. 
Uolimann was present when the reading began and inter- 
rupted with the remark: "You may have Zwingli's 
word; we will have God's word." Others of the Anti- 
pedobaptists expressed strongly their dissatisfaction and 
the members of the party left the church. They re- 
solved to enter anew upon aggressive work, being con- 
vinced that they could expect nothing but violence from 
the council swayed by Zwingli, whom they did not hesi- 
tate to declare the enemy of God. 

Vadian's book on baptism was ready by June 5 and the 
Anti-pedobaptists were required to answer it. They pre- 
sented a comprehensive answer, and a disputation fol- 
lowed. They were, as a matter of course, vanquished 
in the opinion of the party in power, and an ordinance 
followed prohibiting not only the administration of the 
ordinances but all separate assemblies for religious pur- 



ZWINGLI AND VADIAN 119 

poses, except a service at the St. Lawrence church. 
The penalty for administering the ordinances was banish- 
ment with wife and child ; for submitting to baptism a 
heavy fine, with banishment in case of refusal to pay. 

Literature : Pertinent works (as in Bibliography) of Egli, Strickler, 
Heberle, Strasser, Nitsche, Burrage, Schaff, Baur, Keller, Usteri, 
Stahelin, E. Muller, Loserth, Kessler, Gast, Bullinger, Fiisslin, 
Beck, Cornelius, Hosek, Schreiber, Zwingli, and Hubmaier. 



CHAPTER X 

BASEL, BERNE, GRUNINGEN, AND WALDSHUT (i 524-25) 

BASEL was a center of evangelical free thought be- 
fore and after the beginning of the Protestant revo- 
lution. It is probable that anti-pedobaptism appeared 
there not much later than in Zurich. When Blaurock 
escaped from prison in Zurich (April 5, 1525) he betook 
himself to Basel, where he soon succeeded in arousing to 
activity the Anti-pedobaptist forces already present and 
in adding greatly to the numbers of the party. Zwingli 
was ever on the alert and was ready with his earnest 
warnings against the growing interest that was manifest 
in the Anti-pedobaptist cause. Spurred on by Zwingli, 
OEcolampadius, tolerant at heart, opposed them as he 
might. But still they grew, large numbers coming to 
their support from without. OEcolampadius petitioned 
the council to prohibit their ingress into the city ; but the 
council was not disposed to undertake such a task as the 
violent exclusion and suppression of a party already 
strong and influential and rapidly growing in power. 

A disputation on baptism was appointed by the coun- 
cil for June 5. Blaurock and OEcolampadius were the 
chief disputants. As usual the Anti-pedobaptists insisted 
on direct scriptural proof for infant baptism, while the 
Pedobaptists were content to quote Origen, Cyprian, 
Augustine, etc. "What have we to do," said the 
former, " with your doctors, the church Fathers, and the 
councils ? They were men as we are, and as subject to 
blindness as we are." They were not at all impressed 
by OEcolampadius' insistence that their view involved 
the condemnation of the great multitude of Christians of 



DISPUTATION AT BASEL 12 1 

the past and the present, many of them men of the most 
exalted piety and the most profound intellects. Geier- 
falk, one of OEcolampadius' colleagues, thought it a fair 
rebuttal of their demand for scriptural proof of infant 
baptism, to ask them for a scriptural prohibition of the 
same. They were at no loss to show that infant baptism is 
not only not authorized by Scripture, but that it is contra- 
dictory of the entire teaching of Scripture with reference 
to baptism and completely perverts an ordinance of 
Christ. 

OEcolampadius considered himself victorious. Blaurock 
very naturally took a wholly different view of the 
matter, and his followers are said to have been so impru- 
dent as to march in procession through the city proclaim- 
ing the triumph of their cause. The council, following 
the advice of OEcolampadius, now took measures for the 
suppression of the movement. Considerable commotion 
followed. Many fled, while a considerable number were 
thrown into prison. A minority of the council urged the 
execution of the prisoners, as being guilty of heresy and 
sedition. 

Hubmaier, who was still at Waldshut, wrote soon 
afterward a work on baptism in the form of a dialogue 
between himself and OEcolampadius, the utterances of 
the latter being taken apparently from OEcolampadius' 
published account of the disputation. Hubmaier's exe- 
gesis and logic are from the Baptist point of view unex- 
ceptionable. His irony is masterly, but perhaps severer 
than good policy would have dictated. Hubmaier can 
scarcely »be censured for pointing out the inconsistency 
of his evangelical antagonists in opposing believers' bap- 
tism on the ground that rejection of infant baptism in- 
volved the condemnation of the great majority of Chris- 
tians for the last fifteen hundred years, while they 
themselves were in open rebellion against the Roman 



122 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Church, many of whose tenets were centuries old. The 
objection that insistence on believers' baptism tends to 
separation and faction, Hubmaier meets by showing that 
Christ himself was spoken against as a seditious person 
and that he came not to send peace but a sword. If the 
truth produces trouble, wickedness and not truth is 
responsible. He charges OEcolampadius with blasphemy 
when he maintains that those who in striving to be obedi- 
ent to Christ form a new sect, are joining themselves 
to the devil. 

The attempt of OEcolampadius to show that infant 
baptism takes the place of circumcision fared no better. 
" Baptism," says Hubmaier, "is a ceremony of the 
New Testament ; therefore I demand a plain text with 
which you support infant baptism out of the New Testa- 
ment. The word, the word, the WORD! Why will you 
like the night owl hate the light and refuse to come to the 
sun? You prove infant baptism from Exodus, as Zwingli 
proves 'to be' means 'to signify' from Genesis." 1 
To the contention of OEcolampadius that inward bap- 
tism is the principal thing and that it is a matter of small 
importance whether outward baptism be received in 
infancy or afterward, or indeed whether it be received 
at all, Hubmaier replies : " Those who are baptized 
inwardly will surely be baptized outwardly, and not 
annul the commandment of Christ by baptizing in any 
other way." But we must forbear to quote further from 
this masterly piece of polemics. No man since Hub- 
maier has more completely apprehended or more lucidly 
and logically set forth the Baptist position as regards the 
nature and the subjects of baptism ; but he seems never 
to have realized the importance of immersion as the 
form of apostolic baptism. 

This treatise of Hubmaier's was circulated secretly in 

1 Referring to the controversy on the real presence in the Supper. 



BERNE AND GRUNINGEN 123 

Basel for some time before OEcolampadius succeeded in 
securing a copy (October, 1525). Irritated by the 
somewhat severe handling he had received from the 
Waldshut pastor, he sent a copy to Zwingli urging him 
to prepare a refutation. 

In Berne also Anti-pedobaptist views had made a strong 
impression on many minds. Berthold Haller, the leader 
of the evangelical party, was for a time greatly disturbed 
by questionings as to the scriptural authority of infant 
baptism, but Zwingli's influence prevailed to overcome 
his scruples. Hubmaier's tract against OEcolampadius 
had circulated in Berne also, and in November Haller 
wrote to Zwingli: " Balthasar's plain allegation of the 
Scriptures seduces many." He doubts not that Zwingli 
will be able so to answer Hubmaier as to change the minds 
of those that have been affected, and he reassures 
Zwingli by informing him that the authorities have pro- 
scribed the new procedures. 

Griiningen, a Zurich dependency, early became a 
stronghold of the Anti-pedobaptists. Many fugitives 
from the neighborhood of Zurich during the first half of 
1525 took refuge there. Grebel, Manz, Blaurock, now 
a companion of Grebel, seem to have spent most of 
the summer and autumn in that neighborhood. A num- 
ber of Anti-pedobaptist organizations resulted. 

The mandates of the council, the imprisonment, fining, 
and banishment of the opponents of infant baptism, had 
by no means availed to suppress the movement in 
the immediate neighborhood of Zurich. Inquisitorial 
processes occurred from time to time, but few cases of 
baptism could be proved. 

We left Waldshut at the end of 1524, when Hubmaier 
had just returned from his sojourn in Schaffhausen and 
when the impending suppression of evangelical religion 
by the Austrian authorities had been for the time averted. 



124 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Before leaving Schaffhausen Hubmaier had challenged 
his old friend, Dr. Eck, to a disputation on twenty-six 
evangelical propositions. He facetiously represents him- 
self as a fly challenging Eck the elephant. In these 
propositions he does not, however, state distinctly his 
Anti-pedobaptist views. 

Almost immediately after his resumption of leadership 
in Waldshut, Hubmaier's relations to Zwingli and his 
associates underwent a marked change, and he put him- 
self definitely on the side of the Zurich radicals, who 
were soon to carry into effect their ideas of Christian 
life and church order by introducing believers' baptism 
as the initiatory rite into churches of the regenerate. 
From this time forward Hubmaier must be regarded as 
the great literary defender and promoter of the Anti-pedo- 
baptist position. He had previously argued the question 
of baptism with Zwingli, Judae, Hofmeister ; OEcolam- 
padius, and others, but had not hitherto felt that the time 
had come for resolutely and without regard to conse- 
quences putting away a practice that he had long held 
to be unauthorized by Scripture and subversive of the 
purpose of Christ in instituting the ordinance. On Jan- 
uary 16 he wrote to OEcolampadius : " Now the hour is 
come in which I should proclaim publicly and upon the 
housetops what hitherto I have kept pent up within. 
The great God be praised who has vouchsafed to me and 
equally to my hearers this spirit of liberty." 

In answer to a supposed question of OEcolampadius, 
who was of the opinion that a mere outward sign and 
ceremony like baptism should not be made a matter of 
contention and schism, Hubmaier proceeds : 

Why then do we trouble ourselves so much about a sign ? A sign 
at least it is and a symbol instituted by Christ with the most mo- 
mentous and solemn words, namely, in the name of the Father, 
Son, and Holy Spirit. But whosoever weakens or abuses this sign 



PRACTICE AT WALDSHUT 125 

does violence to the words of Christ. The significance of this sign 
and symbol, the obligation of fidelity even unto death in hope of a 
resurrection to a future life, is moreover of greater moment than the 
sign itself. But these significant things can have no applicability to 
infants. Therefore the baptism of infants is foliage without vin- 
tage. 

He lays much stress upon the fact that an obligation 
is assumed in baptism which an infant is incapable of 
assuming and which no one can assume for another. 

" Dearest brother," he proceeds, " you have here my opinion. If I 
err recall me, for I desire nothing so much as to recant, to do every- 
thing, yea, to decline nothing, so far as I am taught by you and 
yours out of God's word. Otherwise I persist in my opinion, for 
thereto am I compelled by the institution of Christ, the word, faith, 
truth, judgment, conscience. . . I am a man and can fall— which is 
human ; but in that case I desire from my heart to recover my 
footing." 

He then asks OEcolampadius whether he thinks that 
Matt. 19 : 14, " For of such is the kingdom of heaven," 
refers especially to children, calling attention to the fact 
that " such ' and not " theirs " is the term used. 

He gives an account of the practice that he has 
introduced at Waldshut : 

Instead of baptism, 1 have the church assembled, bring in the child, 
pronounce, in German, the gospel passage, " They brought a little 
child," then its name is bestowed upon it, then the whole church 
prays on bended knees for the child, commending it to Christ that 
he may be gracious to it. Are the parents still weak and determined 
that the child shall be baptized, I baptize it and for the time being 
am weak with the weak until they shall be better instructed. But in 
the word I do not yield in the minutest particular. 

He states that he has written to Zwingli, presumably 
in the same tenor. He has written twenty-two proposi- 
tions with sixty -four notes that OEcolampadius shall soon 
see. 



126 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

The disputation at Zurich between Zwingli and his 
associates on infant baptism occurred, as we have 
already seen, about this time (January 17). The results 
also we have noticed. Some of the banished leaders 
made their way to Waldshut and no doubt confirmed 
Hubmaier in his purpose to proceed with as little delay 
as possible to carry his views fully into practice. On 
February 2 he set forth a " Public Challenge to all Chris- 
tian Men " to show that baptism should be administered 
to infants, and that it should be celebrated with any 
other words than those of Scripture in the vernacular. 
He asks that a Bible fifty or a hundred years old (the 
age is mentioned no doubt to avoid suspicion of the 
influence of contemporary partisanship in the editing) be 
placed between the two articles (the positive and nega- 
tive propositions he has formulated), that it be opened, 
that it be read with prayerful, humble spirit, and then 
that this controversy be decided according to God's 
word. " So am I well content, for I will ever give God 
the honor and let his word alone be umpire ; to him will I 
subject and yield myself as well as my doctrines. The 
truth is immortal." 

Reublin visited Waldshut early in the spring, and was 
for some weeks closely associated with Hubmaier in 
evangelical work. It was doubtless his influence in part 
that led Hubmaier to advance from the rejection of infant 
baptism to the adoption of believers' baptism. Along 
with sixty others he accompanied Reublin (about Easter, 
1525) to a neighboring village and they were baptized by 
the latter on a profession of their faith. Afterward Hub- 
maier himself publicly baptized out of a milk pail over 
three hundred more believers. 1 He had for a long while 
refrained from taking this decisive step in view of the 

1 The term " baptize " is used by the author in this connection to designate an act 
which he does not regard as apostolic baptism. 



HUBMAIER AND ZWINGLI 127 

embarrassed position of the city and his fear of bringing 
it into still graver danger ; but he had now reached the 
conviction that further delay would involve disloyalty to 
Christ and that come what might the New Testament 
order must be restored. 

As might have been expected this radical procedure 
was not satisfactory to all. A large majority of the 
people were so devoted to Hubmaier that they were 
ready to sustain him in the carrying out of his convic- 
tions ; but an influential minority felt that the city had 
been thereby seriously compromised and that the effect 
would prove disastrous. From a merely human and po- 
litical point of view the position of Waldshut was un- 
doubtedly made far more critical by the introduction of 
believers' baptism. One effect of it was to intensify the 
distrust of the Austrian government, which, however, 
was only awaiting a favorable opportunity for administer- 
ing the chastisement so long threatened. 

But the loss of the confidence of the ruling classes in 
the evangelical Swiss cantons was a more serious matter 
and made it easier for Austria to wreak her vengeance 
on the heroic little city, already weakened by internal 
dissension. Hubmaier knew full well that he was the 
occasion of the impending disaster ; but truth required 
him to act as he had done, and "the truth," he never 
wearied of saying, "is immortal." 

Zwingli's treatise on " Baptism, Infant Baptism, and 
Anabaptism " was published on May twenty-eighth. The 
disputation in Basel between OEcolampadius and the Anti- 
pedobaptists, in which, as we have seen, Hubmaier took a 
deep interest, occurred on June fifth. Five days later Hub- 
maier wrote the Zurich Council that he had read Zwingli's 
book and had nearly completed an answer. He besought 
the council for God's sake and in view of the future 
judgment to give him a safe conduct to Zurich in order 



128 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

that privately or publicly, before the whole council or 
delegated individuals, he might discuss the question of in- 
fant baptism with Zwingli. He would be glad to have 
Dr. Sebastian Hofmeister present. If he should be 
found in error he would gladly recant ; should Zwingli be 
found in error he ought not to be ashamed to desist from 
the error, for the truth will be finally victorious. 

Hubmaier's work on baptism (already referred to), di- 
rected nominally against OEcolampadius but having con- 
stant reference to Zwingli's work, was published July 
ii. Most impartial readers of Zwingli's and Hubmaier's 
books on baptism will agree with Usteri, a modern Swiss 
Reformed writer, when he says: "The reading of the 
writing on the Christian baptism of believers teaches 
clearly that a direct Scripture proof for infant baptism 
cannot be brought into the field. Over against Zwingli's 
sophistry it affords a peculiar satisfaction to see how 
clearly, transparently, and harmoniously with Hubmaier 
the richly collected biblical proof-texts group themselves 
around his .idea of baptism. According to this [Hub- 
maier's view] the right scriptural order is no other than 
this: i, Word; 2, Hearing; 3, Faith; 4, Baptism; 5, 
Work. And Hubmaier adds : ' I hold accordingly that 
Scripture is also a Hercules,' which is quite in accord 
with his device and the motto of his writings : ' the 
truth is immortal.' " Usteri further remarks that Hub- 
maier's exegesis is substantially in accord with modern 
scientific methods. 

The profound impression produced by this writing in 
Basel, Berne, and elsewhere, we have already noticed. 
Urged by OEcolampadius, Haller, and others, who felt 
themselves unequal to the task, Zwingli promptly set 
about preparing an elaborate reply, that appeared about 
November. Hubmaier thought it advisable " to smite 
down clear out of the way this perverse booklet with the 



CONRAD GREBEL 129 

staff of Jacob, i. e., with evangelical knowledge," for he 
regarded it as likely to prove a stone of stumbling to 
many pious souls. His rejoinder was completed by 
November 30, but was not printed until after his settle- 
ment in Moravia in 1526. 

The names of the leaders of the early Swiss Anti- 
pedobaptists have become familiar through the foregoing 
narrative and their leading characteristics and relative 
importance have appeared. A few further details with 
reference to the more prominent characters may not be 
out of place. 

Conrad Grebel, whom Zwingli called the " Cory- 
phaeus of the Anabaptists," and who was regarded by 
all the opponents of the movement as by far the most 
influential of its leaders, was the son of a Zurich patri- 
cian and councilor. Born some time after 1490, he 
spent about three years (15 15-15 18) in the University of 
Vienna, where he was in receipt of a handsome pension 
from the Emperor Ferdinand and where under the guid- 
ance of Vadian, then prominently connected with the 
university, he made great progress in classical and other 
studies. He proceeded next to the University of Paris, 
where he enjoyed an annual allowance of three hundred 
crowns and the friendship of the famous Swiss scholar, 
Glarean. Here he fell into evil ways and thereby im- 
paired his health. He quarreled with his father, who 
drew his pension and partly on account of his reckless 
manner of life withheld it, thus bringing him into sore 
embarrassment. Grebel's father, by the way, was be- 
headed in October, 1526, for illegally receiving money 
from foreign princes in his son's name. 

Conrad returned to his home in 1520 and soon began 

to take a profound interest in the evangelical movement. 

He was one of Zwingli's most zealous supporters up to 

1523, when we find him among the radicals who insisted 

1 



130 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

on the immediate abolition of tithes and readjustment of 
rents. 

It has commonly been represented that Grebel and his 
associates were greatly influenced by Thomas Munzer. 
It is not impossible that some of Munzer's published 
utterances may have had an awakening influence upon 
them ; but that they had gone far beyond him in their 
apprehension of Baptist principles and that they abhorred 
the chiliastic fanaticism which led him to seek to estab- 
lish a reign of righteousness by the sword, is evident 
from a letter written by Grebel and others to Munzer in 
September, 1524, before the outbreak of the Peasants' 
War. They state that they have received his writing 
against false faith and baptism, and rejoice wonderfully 
to have found one who is of common Christian under- 
standing with themselves and can point out their defects 
to the evangelical preachers. They hear that he has 
translated the mass into German and that he uses litur- 
gical forms unauthorized by Scripture. They earnestly 
remonstrate with him on this matter and urge him to do 
away with all papal, antichristian forms and ceremonies. 
They understand that although he has written against 
infant baptism he continues to practise it. They urge 
him to bring his practice as well as his teaching into com- 
plete accord with God's word. They have heard that he 
has preached against the princes and has counseled 
armed resistance. If this be true, they entreat him for 
the sake of the cause of Christ to desist. They assure 
him that with the Bible he can stand before Luther and 
the princes. In Zurich there are not twenty who really 
believe the word of God. They fully expect to be called 
upon to suffer for their faith. Grebel expresses an in- 
tention to write against infant baptism. 1 

It is evident that Grebel, Castelberg, Manz, Aberli, 

1 See the letter printed in full in Cornelius, Vol II., p. 240 seq. 



BLAUROCK AND REUBLIN 131 

Brotli, Oggenfuss, and Huiuf, who signed this important 
document, were not disciples of Miinzer, but would-be 
teachers. 

We shall follow Grebel's brief career to its close in the 
next chapter. He died of the pestilence soon after 
March, 1526, having suffered much for the faith. 

Felix Manz, son of a canon of the Minster Church, 
was closely associated with Grebel from the beginning. 
He was highly educated and was an accomplished 
Hebraist. He was unsurpassed by any of his Swiss con- 
temporaries in his evangelistic gifts, unless it were Blau- 
rock, and his enthusiasm in the Anti-pedobaptist cause 
was unbounded. He was instrumental in the conversion 
of hundreds, if not thousands, and when he suffered 
martyrdom by drowning, January 5, 1527, though still a 
young man he had done a noble lifework. His name 
will continue to figure prominently in the events to be 
narrated in the next chapter. 

Georg Blaurock, of Chur, left his monastery to take 
up the cause of evangelical reform and was one of the 
earliest and most zealous of the radical leaders. He was 
the first to take the momentous step of administering 
a new baptism. From this time onward he seems never 
to have wavered, but was instant in season and out of 
season. His principles were identical, as far as we can 
see, with those of Grebel and Manz. Multitudes thronged 
his ministry as he journeyed from place to place, and 
large numbers were led to repent of their sins and to 
confess their Saviour in baptism. He followed the apos- 
tolic example of baptizing immediately on a confession of 
faith and an expression of desire for baptism. This was 
no doubt true in a measure of all the early Anti-pedobap- 
tists, but few of them seem to have been so eager to 
baptize as he. Of his earliest labors in the* Anti-pedo- 
baptist cause we have already had some account. We 



132 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPT1SM 

shall have occasion to become better acquainted with him 
hereafter. His ministry extended to nearly all parts of 
Protestant Switzerland from 1525 to May, 1529, when he 
entered upon what proved to be a brief but fruitful minis- 
try in the Tyrol, where he died heroically at the stake 
August 26, 1529. It is probable that he baptized a thou- 
sand or more during the four years and a half of his 
evangelistic career. He was known by his brethren as 
"Strong Georg " and was sometimes designated a 
"Second Paul." He seems to have been entirely free 
from fanaticism and to have attained to a remarkably 
high standard of Christian consecration. 1 

Wilhelm Reublin, whom we know as one of the earliest 
impugners of infant baptism and as one of the most elo- 
quent and zealous of the Anti-pedobaptist evangelists, 
was born at Rottenburg on the Neckar. He was among 
the first of the Swiss priests to take a radically evangel- 
ical position. In 1522 we find him in Basel, where in a 
religious procession instead of relics he bore a large Bible, 
saying that this was the truly sacred thing, the others 
were merely dead bones. Though the most popular 
evangelical preacher in Basel he was driven away be- 
cause he abetted the breaking of ecclesiastical fasts. He 
was the first pastor in the canton of Zurich to break a 
fast and the first to marry. He was perhaps too violently 
denunciatory and somewhat inconsiderate in his treat- 
ment of opponents ; but he was soundly evangelical in 
his views and, next to Blaurock, had probably the most 
fruitful career of any of the early Anti-pedobaptist 
leaders. It was his unspeakable privilege to convince 
Hubmaier that the time had come for action and to bap- 
tize him who was to become the greatest and soundest of 

!The most exhaustive account of Blaurock is that by F. Jecklin in the twenty- 
first " Jahresbericht der historisch-antiquarischen Gesellschaft von Graubiinden." 
i8gi, pp. 1-20. Blaurock's original name was Cajacob. 



DENCK, SATTLER, AND HETZER 1 33 

all the Anti-pedobaptists of the sixteenth century. After 
laboring in many places throughout Switzerland and 
Southern Germany he removed to Moravia, where his ex- 
perience was for a time most unhappy. 

Of Hans Denck, Michael Sattler, Ludwig Hetzer, 
Jacob Gross, and other leaders, whose activity as Anti- 
pedobaptists was chiefly outside of Switzerland and after 
the middle of 1525, we shall have occasion to treat here- 
after. 



Literature: Pertinent works (as in Bibliography) of Egli, Strickler, 
Heberle, Strasser, Nitsche, Burrage, Schaff, Baur, Keller, Usteri, 
Stahelin, E. Miiller, Loserth, Kessler, Gast, Bullinger, Fusslin, 
Beck, Cornelius, Hosek, Schreiber, Zwingli, and Hubmaier. 



CHAPTER XI 

PERSECUTION AND DISPERSION 

WE have traced the rise of the Swiss Anti-pedo- 
baptist movement in the canton of Zurich and 
its rapid spread throughout the other evangelical can- 
tons during the first half of 1525. For a time the move- 
ment threatened to sweep everything before it. Not 
only were the masses of the people enthusiastic in their 
acceptance of the new doctrine and practice, but most of 
the leading evangelical scholars were profoundly moved 
by the earnestness and zeal of the leaders of the party, 
and by the absence of clear scriptural warrant for the 
baptizing of infants. 

The time was most opportune for the rapid spread of 
Anti-pedobaptist views. The violent breaking away from 
the old order of things by the politico-ecclesiastical re- 
formers prepared men's minds for still more radical 
changes. The insistence of Luther and Zwingli on 
scriptural authority for every point of faith and practice 
was sure to lead to a demand for the scriptural authen- 
tication of infant baptism. The socialistic aims that 
found expression in the Peasants' War were based upon 
the people's understanding of apostolic Christianity. The 
leading reformers had admitted the injustice of the feudal 
system and had declaimed against the extortionate prac- 
tices of the hierarchy. The radical party made social 
reform one of the chief planks in its platform. This latter 
consideration undoubtedly predisposed the masses to 
give heed to the preaching of the simple gospel in which 
brotherly love figured very prominently. For the per- 
manence of the movement the time was most inoppor- 
134 



MOTIVES OF PERSECUTORS 135 

tune. The Peasants' War was already in progress when 
the Anti-pedobaptist movement in Switzerland became 
aggressive. The universal alarm and consternation 
caused by this determined effort of the peasantry to 
throw off their bondage and by the fanatical procedures 
of Miinzer and Pfeiffer, with which the name " Anabap- 
tist" was closely associated in the popular mind, caused 
the Anti-pedobaptist movement to be regarded with the 
utmost disfavor by all who were interested in the main- 
tenance of existing social and religious institutions. 

We shall misjudge the good men who urged the extir- 
pation of Anti-pedobaptism, if we fail to take into consid- 
eration their view of the magnitude of the danger that 
threatened everything they valued in Church and State. 
It was not wanton cruelty but a sense of sheer necessity 
that made Zwingli the fierce persecutor he became. 
Once convinced that disaster was involved in the move- 
ment his animosity against its leaders became unbounded 
and he showed himself incapable of doing justice to their 
arguments or of seeing anything good in their lives. We 
abhor intolerance, but we must temper our disapproval 
of the intolerant by taking into careful consideration the 
circumstances of time and place. 

The earlier stages of persecution have already been 
recorded. Fines and imprisonment had greatly interfered 
with the progress of Anti-pedobaptist principles since 
January, 1525. But these principles were far too popu- 
lar and accorded too completely with a deep-seated and 
profoundly felt need to be so readily suppressed as the 
authorities hoped. As in the apostolic age, persecution 
intensified the zeal and spread abroad the principles of 
the persecuted. Such enthusiastic radicals as Grebel, 
Manz, Blaurock, Reublin, and Brotli, might have been 
content to labor quietly in their own communities and to 
carry forward the work of propagandism in an orderly 



136 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

and deliberate manner had they not been driven by the 
earlier persecuting measures to extend the sphere of their 
activity, and had they not been aroused by the violent 
treatment they suffered to do everything in their power 
for the overthrow of the standing order. 

We have traced the progress of these radical reformers 
and the oral and literary controversies of which they 
were the occasion and in which they were participants to 
about December, 1525. We have seen the center of 
interest in the movement shift from the immediate neigh- 
borhood of Zurich first to St. Gall, from March onward, 
and afterward to Gruningen. The inability of the 
authorities of the bailiwick of Gruningen to cope with 
the rapidly spreading and highly popular movement and 
the urgent appeal of the Gruningen authorities to the 
Zurich Council to arrange for a disputation in which the 
points at issue should be freely discussed, with the re- 
quest that Zwingli be admonished to allow the poor 
people to express their minds freely and not by his over- 
bearing demeanor to make their words "stick in their 
throats," resulted in the appointment of a disputation for 
November 6-8, 1525. Arrangements were made for a 
full representation of the Anti-pedobaptists and of their 
opponents. That good order might be preserved in the 
debates and the utmost freedom of utterance be secured, 
the Abbot of Cappel, the Commander of Kussnacht, Dr. 
Hofmeister of Schaffhausen, and Dr. Vadian of St. Gall, 
were appointed presidents. Zwingli, Judae, and Gross- 
mann were the principal disputants on the one side and 
Grebel, Manz, and Blaurock on the other. Hubmaier was 
expected but did not appear, owing no doubt to the criti- 
cal situation at Waldshut. 

The disputation was begun in the great council chamber 
with open doors, but the large number of Anti-pedobap- 
tists present became so demonstrative that it was thought 



DISPUTATION AND IMPRISONMENT 137 

advisable to remove it to a room in the Minster Church 
and to restrict the attendance. The debate lasted for 
three days and the points at issue were ably and fully 
argued on both sides. 

The authorities decided that the victory lay on the 
side of Zwingli. As might have been expected the Anti- 
pedobaptist leaders resolutely refused to submit to this 
decision, denied that any scriptural ground for infant 
baptism had been adduced, and insisted that their oppo- 
nents had taken advantage of the fact that they enjoyed 
the favor of the authorities to deny them freedom of 
speech. A number of Anti-pedobaptists were now 
arraigned before the authorities at Zurich and in the 
Gruningen district. Some promised obedience, while 
others were heavily fined. 

On November 18, Grebel, Manz, and Blaurock were 
imprisoned in the new tower on account of their ana- 
baptistry and their "unseemly practices"; their food 
was to be limited to apple-sauce and bread and water, 
and they were to be wholly denied communication with 
their friends. The imprisonment was to last as long as 
the council should think fit. Ulrich Deck of Waldshut, 
who had for some time been laboring in Gruningen, 
Martin Ling of Schaffhausen, and Michael Sattler of 
Staufen, in Breisgau, were banished. Sattler we shall 
meet again as one of the ablest, most amiable, and no- 
blest of the Anti-pedobaptist leaders and martyrs. Large 
numbers were imprisoned in Gruningen, and of these 
many persisted in their views and expressed their deter- 
mination to be steadfast even unto death. They did not 
hesitate to declare that infant baptism was of the devil. 
The authorities claimed that the Anti-pedobaptists had 
been given the amplest opportunity to defend their prin- 
ciples and practices in the disputation at Zurich ; that 
they had been fairly vanquished by Zwingli and his as- 



138 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

sociates, and that their persistence in denouncing infant 
baptism and in rebaptizing involved disobedience to the 
constituted authorities, caused schism and the destruc- 
tion of Christian love among Christian people, and could 
not be tolerated with safety to the community. The 
measures taken against them in Gruningen proved so 
ineffective that the sheriff (Landvogf) was in despair. 
" Truly, I know not where I should attack, so much dis- 
turbance besets me." "The Baptists make my head 
gray with their words and proceedings." 

The long-threatened punishment of Waldshut occurred 
on December 9. The Waldshut authorities even in view 
of imminent doom had a few weeks before refused the 
demand of the Austrian authorities for the extradition of 
Hubmaier with eight other leaders of the disobedient party 
and the surrender of the city to be dealt with at the dis- 
cretion of the government. Seeing that the possibility 
of maintaining the evangelical cause in Waldshut was at 
an end, with the permission of the Waldshut authorities 
Hubmaier withdrew on December 5, as he himself said, 
" a mortally sick man, who knows not whither he is to 
go." Forewarned that he was about to be seized, his 
flight was so precipitate that he was obliged to leave his 
clothing behind. His wife managed to get into his hands 
a small amount of money, and by the help of a neigh- 
bor he got safely across the Rhine. Many of his imme- 
diate followers escaped at about the same time. It was 
Hubmaier's intention to go first to Basel and thence to 
Strasburg ; but the danger of arrest was so imminent 
that he thought it advisable to make his way to Zurich, 
notwithstanding his knowledge of the fact that his views 
were there under the ban. 

The fall of Waldshut was lamented by the leaders of 
the dominant evangelical party in Switzerland, and their 
animosity was aroused quite as much against Hubmaier, 



HUBMAIER'S SUFFERING AT ZURICH 1 39 

whose radical teachings and procedures had been the 
immediate occasion of the catastrophe, as against the 
Austrian authorities, who would tolerate nothing evan- 
gelical. That an unfriendly reception awaited him at 
Zurich he no doubt fully expected ; but the terribleness 
of the sufferings he was there to undergo for his fidelity 
to New Testament principles he could scarcely have 
foreseen. 

Hubmaier arrived in Zurich ragged and wretched. He 
was entertained by a widow recently baptized by Aberli, 
now the most influential resident Anti-pedobaptist. He 
was shortly afterward imprisoned by the council, who 
naturally feared that the arrival of this great leader 
would cause a fresh outbreak of activity on the part of 
the radical religionists. Zwingli, Judae, Myconius, Hof- 
meister and others were appointed to confer with Hub- 
maier in regard to his teachings. A discussion took place 
on December 21, in which Hubmaier charged Zwingli 
with inconsistency in defending infant baptism, which he 
had earlier acknowledged to be without scriptural author- 
ity. Zwingli sought to prove from Acts 2 that infant 
church-membership existed in the apostolic church, and 
he quoted the passage in 1 Corinthians 10 about the 
baptism of the Hebrews by Moses in the cloud and in the 
sea, to prove that infants as well as adults were proper 
subjects of baptism. He proceeded to reproach Hub- 
maier violently for the disaster he had brought upon 
Waldshut. Feeble in health, and at the mercy of his 
opponents, Hubmaier is said to have promised to recon- 
sider his views. 

The Austrian authorities, chagrined that in the capture 
of Waldshut the chief object of their displeasure had 
escaped, urgently and repeatedly demanded the extradi- 
tion of Hubmaier. That this was persistently refused 
was certainly to the credit of the Zurich authorities. 



140 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Zwingli made much of the favor thus shown, when 
afterward he was reproached for his cruel treatment 
of Hubmaier. It is not entirely clear whether the 
torture was literally applied to Hubmaier or not. 1 His 
own language does not necessarily imply more than that 
his recantation was extorted from him by the "great hard- 
ness and torment of the rigorous imprisonment, which " 
he "suffered against all right and in spite of his appeal 
to the confederacy, to the Zurich Council, and to the em- 
peror himself." He claimed that the council had sought 
by violent means to compel him, a sick man who had 
just risen from a death-bed, to change his faith. 

Zwingli is said at this time to have publicly advocated 
the execution of Hubmaier and the other Anti-pedobap- 
tist leaders. Hubmaier's own account of his imprison- 
ment is probably to be taken as accurate. He relates 
that more than twenty men, widows, delicate women, 
and maidens were thrown into a miserable prison, and 
were given to understand that during their lifetime they 
were to be permitted to look upon neither sun nor moon, 
and on a diet of water and bread they were to remain 
together, and die, and rot. Among the prisoners there 
were some (himself probably among them) who for three 
days did not take a bite of bread, in order not to let the 
rest hunger. Among Hubmaier's fellow-sufferers were 
Grebel, Manz, Blaurock, and a number of less prominent 
brethren, and Anna Manz, Anna Wiederkehr, and Eliza- 
beth and Margaret Hottinger. Several of these women 
were among the most heroic confessors. 

Most of the prisoners were sentenced on March seventh. 
In the process of March 5, Hubmaier is said to have prom- 
ised to desist from rebaptizing. Blaurock did not hesi- 
tate to confess that he, along with his brethren in Christ, 

: Of recent Swiss writers, Baur and Usteri are of the opinion that physical tor- 
ture in the technical sense was employed ; Egli thinks the evidence indecisive. 



HUBMAIER'S "RECANTATION" 141 

Grebel and Manz, had introduced believers' baptism, and 
to charge that Luther and Zwingli, no less than the pope, 
were thieves and murderers, inasmuch as they did not 
enter the sheepfold by the proper door, but sought to 
climb up some other way. 

On March 7 a mandate proceeded from the council 
affixing the penalty of death by drowning, without any 
grace, to rebaptism. As regards those already imprisoned 
it is enacted that they be discharged in case they will 
confess that rebaptism is wrong and infant baptism right, 
and on their pledging themselves to abandon all effort for 
the promulgation of Anti-pedobaptist views. In case of 
relapse they are to suffer the death penalty by drown- 
ing. From this time onward no quarter was given to the 
advocates of believers' baptism. 

The great majority of the imprisoned persisted in 
maintaining that since infant baptism is not commanded 
in Scripture it " must be rooted out," as must everything 
" which the Heavenly Father has not planted." 

It was the design of the authorities by securing his 
recantation to demoralize the Anti-pedobaptist hosts, who 
looked upon him as the greatest defender of their prin- 
ciples. If torture in the technical sense was actually ap- 
plied it was with this highly important end in view. 
Probably in the early days of March he was induced to 
sign a form of recantation, and it was arranged that he 
should personally appear in the two principal churches 
on the following Sunday and read it to the assembled 
multitudes. 

The recantation begins : 

I, Balthasar Hubmaier, of Friedberg, publicly confess with this 
my autograph that I have not otherwise known nor understood all 
Scriptures pertaining to water baptism, than that preaching should 
first take place, then believing, and thirdly, baptism. Upon this I 
finally took a firm stand. But now there has been shown to me 



142 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

through Master Ulrich Zwingli the covenant of God made with 
Abraham and his seed, also circumcision as a sign of the covenant, 
and how baptism takes the place of circumcision, which I have not 
been able to solve ; and so also there has been held before me by 
others, as Master Leo, Dr. Sebastian, and Myconius, how love should 
be a judge and umpire in all the Scriptures, which I have taken 
deeply to heart, and so I have thought much of love and have finally 
been moved to relinquish my contention that infants should not be 
baptized, and acknowledge that I have erred in the matter of re- 
baptism. 1 

He repudiates the charge that he rejects magistracy 
and insists that he has ever taught obedience to the con- 
stituted authorities and the right of Christians to exercise 
magistracy. He denies that he has ever taught com- 
munity of goods ; he has simply insisted on the require- 
ment of Christian charity to impart freely of one's sub- 
stance for the relief of hungry, thirsty, naked, and im- 
prisoned believers. He repudiates the charge that he 
thinks himself without sin and confesses that he is a poor 
sinner, conceived and born in sin, and will remain a 
sinner even until death. He entreats the authorities in 
consideration of his severe illness, adversity, banish- 
ment, and poverty, and of the great anger and cruelty 
that his adversaries have conceived against him, to deal 
graciously with him and not to suffer him to fall into the 
hands of his enemies, " for," he continues, "I am a weak 
man and can in this weak body not renounce bodily so- 
licitude." 

Hubmaier soon bitterly repented that in his weakness 
and despair he had so far compromised his position as to 
set his hand to this document; yet he knew full well that 
those who required this act of him were not deceived 
thereby. The instinct of self-preservation was undoubt- 

1 Stahelin-(" Zwingli," Vol I., p. 516), is of the opinion that this is the recanta- 
tion Hubmaier promised to make in December, 1525, and not that which he was 
finally tortured into making' in March and April, 1526. The same form of recanta- 
tion may have been repeatedly employed. 



HUBMAIER'S DEPARTURE 143 

edly stronger in him than in most of his brethren, who 
could be induced neither by " bodily solicitude " nor by 
torture even momentarily to depart a hair's breadth from 
what they believed to be the truth. Yet if we consider 
the circumstances few of us will feel justified in casting re- 
proach upon this great and good man for so far manifesting 
fleshly weakness. It is gratifying to know that he soon 
rose superior to the carnal desire for self-preservation. 
When, according to arrangement, he was taken to the 
Minster Church to read publicly the document he had 
signed, he began instead to defend believers' baptism. 
The people murmured, Zwingli was obliged to restore 
order, and Hubmaier was remanded to prison. 

The increased rigors of his imprisonment and the de- 
cision of the council to let their impenitent prisoners 
"die and rot" 1 in the tower finally overcame him and 
he consented, April 11, to do what was required of him. 
After performing his recantation, on his promise to depart 
from the Zurich jurisdiction and to refrain from activity 
in the Anti-pedobaptist cause while in the jurisdiction, he 
was released. Some kindly disposed citizens put into his 
hands ten gold pieces to aid him in his journeyings, 
without the approval of Zwingli, who was not above im- 
puting to the man who had suffered such hardship and 
was evidently in the depths of poverty the most sordid 
motives. He went first to Constance and after a short 
visit departed for Augsburg, where an extensive Anti- 
pedobaptist movement was in progress. Here he met 
and conferred with Hans Denck, the high-minded mystic, 
with some of whose views he by no means agreed. Be- 
fore June 21 he had found a home at Nikolsburg in Mo- 
ravia, where he was to labor for more than a year with 
wonderful assiduity and success. 

Grebel, Manz, and Blaurock were soon released with 

1 These words are official. 



144 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

the injunction to abstain from Anti-pedobaptist teaching 
and practice. We find them soon impelled by their con- 
suming zeal to renew their activity and their cause con- 
tinued to flourish in the Griiningen district, the scene of 
their labors. If the Zurich authorities were reluctant to 
carry out the mandate in accordance with which drown- 
ing was to be the penalty of rebaptizing and evidently 
intended it more as a deterrent than as a law to be 
strictly executed, the local Griiningen authorities posi- 
tively refused to execute the inhuman law and appealed 
in support of their refusal to certain old privileges that 
had been bestowed upon the district by the house of 
Austria. 

In Griiningen the Anti-pedobaptist cause struck its roots 
deeper than anywhere else in the canton of Zurich. 
Many influential families were among its adherents. The 
heavy fines that were imposed on baptizers and baptized 
proved ruinous to the estates of many and interfered 
seriously with the economic well-being of the district. 
The authorities complained bitterly of the disturbances 
thus caused and urged the Zurich Council not to pay too 
much heed to the clergy, who were the chief informers 
against Anti-pedobaptists, " since some of them [the 
clergy] are lying and worthless." It would seem from 
the complaints of the Griiningen authorities as well as 
from the constantly recurring charges of the Anti-pedo- 
baptists, that the great mass of the Swiss clergy were 
not only lacking in vital godliness but were even scandal- 
ously vicious. Such men were the objects of attack on 
the part of the Anti-pedobaptists and such in turn felt 
that their means of living were jeopardized by the 
pointed denunciations of the zealous sectaries. As a 
result of the firm footing which the Anti-pedobaptists had 
gained in Griiningen and the comparatively favorable 
attitude of the authorities, they were able to carry on 



CHURCHES ORGANIZED 145 

their work with vigor and success despite the zeal of the 
sheriff of the district and the rigorous and frequently 
reiterated mandates of the Zurich Council. 

Of the seventy Anti-pedobaptist organizations in the 
canton of Zurich from the beginning of the movement 
till its almost complete suppression about 1535, twelve 
were in Zurichberg, seventeen in Oberland and adjacent 
regions, twenty-seven in Unterland, twelve in Weinland, 
and three in Kronaueramt. Of those in Zurichberg only 
two remained after 1527 and none after 1 5 3 1 . Of those 
in Oberland, all but two of which were formed during 
the years 1525-27, only four survived the year 1527, and 
only one (not mentioned in the earlier lists) remained to 
be extinguished after 15 31. In Unterland eleven organi- 
zations were effected 1525-27, nine of which survived 
the latter date, while during 1527-31 fourteen new organ- 
izations were effected ; of the older organizations twelve 
remained to suffer extermination between 1531 and 1535 
and two were first formed during this period. Of the 
Weinland churches one was formed 1525-27, two during 
1527-31, and nine during the years of extermination, 
1531-35. All the Anti-pedobaptist communities in the 
Kronaueramt seem to have been organized during the 
later period. These figures show to some extent the 
rapidity with which the movement spread in the Zurich 
dependencies and how ineffective were the efforts of the 
Zurich authorities to suppress the popular party that 
insisted on a complete return to New Testament Chris- 
tianity. 

About the beginning of 1527 Manz and Blaurock were 
again arrested in the Griiningen district and brought to 
Zurich for trial. Reluctant as the council was to inflict 
the death penalty, it had come to feel that the case of 
Manz was a most aggravated one and that an example 
should be made of him. There is every reason to believe 

K 



146 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

that the council acted on the advice of Zwingli when it 
decreed that this zealous and godly man should have his 
hands tied together and put over his knees, a stick in- 
serted between his arms and legs, and should be thrown 
from a boat into the Rhine at a designated spot. This 
judgment was duly executed. The preamble of the 
sentence bases the action of the council on the fact that 
Manz " confesses that he has said that he and others who 
would accept Christ's leadership and follow the word, 
also walk according to Christ, would gather themselves 
together and unite themselves with him through rebap- 
tism and let the others remain in their faith ; accordingly 
now he and his followers have separated themselves from 
the Christian community and under the appearance and 
pretext of a Christian assembly and church will resusci- 
tate and equip a self-constituted sect, factions, and 
assemblies of their own." Manz is further accused of 
maintaining that no Christian may exercise magistracy, 
or judge others with the sword or put to death or punish 
any one. That for such teaching and practice a man 
should be put to death with the approval of Christian 
teachers like Zwingli and his associates is strange indeed, 
and readers unacquainted with the spirit of the age and 
the circumstances of this particular case may be prompted 
to exclaim that men guilty of such intolerance were no 
Christians. This is not, however, the judgment of men 
who understand the spirit of the times and appreciate 
the difficulties that seemed to be involved in allowing 
each individual to choose his own manner of worshiping 
God and freely to propagate his views. To Zwingli and 
his associates nothing but disaster seemed likely to result 
from toleration. It would seem that Zwingli at last be- 
came so embittered against his opponents that he rather 
gloried in their sufferings. 

Blaurock was tried the same day and was pronounced 



CONFERENCE OF THE CANTONS 1 47 

equally guilty with Manz ; but one victim sufficed, and in 
consideration of the fact that he was a foreigner he was 
sentenced to be beaten on the naked back through the 
streets until the blood should flow. On his promising to 
withdraw immediately from the Zurich jurisdiction and 
with the assurance that he would be drowned in case he 
returned, he was released. He soon returned, however, 
to the Griiningen district and resumed his ministry. 

The unwillingness of the Griiningen authorities to exe- 
cute the mandates of the Zurich Council was a source 
of much perplexity, especially as the advocates of 
believers' baptism were rapidly gaining ground and 
spreading into the surrounding regions. Early in June, 
1527, the Zurich Council peremptorily demanded the 
drowning of a number of prisoners. On the refusal of 
the local authorities to comply, the Zurich Council 
threatened to secure the intervention of Berne and to 
take measures for enforcing obedience. 

Inasmuch as Anti-pedobaptism was spreading from 
canton to canton and was in the opinion of the authori- 
ties menacing civil and ecclesiastical order, the Zurich 
Council thought it advisable to invite the confederated 
cantons of Berne, Basel, Schaffhausen, Chur, Appenzell 
and St. Gall to a conference to be held on August 13, to 
agree upon concerted and vigorous measures for the ex- 
termination of Anti-pedobaptism, which was declared to 
have for its aim the destruction " not only of the true 
right faith of Christian hearts, but also of outward and 
human ordinances and institutions of Christian and or- 
dinary magistracy, against brotherly love and good 
morals." Correspondence was also inaugurated with 
Augsburg and Ulm, where Anti-pedobaptists were known 
to abound, and from the close commercial relations in 
which they stood to Switzerland having many interests 
in common with the latter. 



148 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

By December 16, 1527, arrangements had been com- 
pleted for a more thorough inquisition of heresy than had 
yet found place. At this time the council issued a man- 
date to the sheriffs of the canton requiring them to sup- 
press all private meetings for religious purposes, and to 
arrest and bring to Zurich for imprisonment in the Wel- 
lenberg all participants in such meetings, who are to 
be released only on payment of five pounds. 

The result of this mandate was the arrest and exami- 
nation of large numbers, especially in the Unterland 
district. In these investigations the Anti-pedobaptists 
laid chief stress on the moral corruption of the clergy 
and the lack of proper discipline in the churches of the 
standing order. The authorities could not deny that the 
charges were well founded and remedial measures were 
adopted. 

After Easter, 1528, synods were established, one of 
whose most important functions was to discipline un- 
worthy clergymen. In these synods the gravest charges 
were made by representatives of several of the congre- 
gations against their pastors. The pastor of Steinmaur 
was removed for adultery. The Wetzikon Church 
accused its pastor of backbiting and theft. Wangen 
charged its pastor with drunkenness and gambling. The 
Bulach pastor was charged with absenting himself from 
church services when other ministers preached, with 
avarice, and with failure to train his children aright. He 
is required to go to Zurich for a course of study. The 
Russikon, Zell, Wildberg, and Turbenthal pastors were 
found guilty of drunkenness, tavern-haunting, and fight- 
ing. The pastor of Laufen was charged with covetous- 
ness, that of Ottenbach with drunkenness and wife-beat- 
ing, and that of Stallikon with drunkenness. Of these 
some were removed, while others were sharply censured 
and on promise of amendment allowed to retain their 



EXECUTION OF FALK AND REIMANN 149 

positions. Thus an indirect effect of the Anti-pedobaptist 
movement was the inauguration of a somewhat vigorous 
discipline in the churches of the dominant party. 

Already in 1526 baptismal registers had been intro- 
duced into the churches by the authorities, in order that 
it might be authoritatively ascertained whether any par- 
ticular person had been baptized. Evasion of the law 
by opponents of infant baptism was thus rendered more 
difficult. Under the new disciplinary arrangement of 
1528 provision was made for a close scrutiny of the lives 
of the members of each community, in order that those 
out of sympathy with the standing order might be the 
more readily detected. Thus the organization of the 
dominant party became more and more complete, the 
enforcement of conformity to the established order more 
and more rigorous, and the persecution of dissent more 
and more exterminating. 

At Griiningen a number of Anti-pedobaptists had Iain 
in prison for a year and fifteen weeks. In August, 1528, 
they were taken to Zurich for examination and subjected 
to great hardship, a small quantity of bread and water 
being the only nourishment allowed. Two of the 
leaders, Jacob Falk and Henry Reimann, persisted in 
their Anti-pedobaptism, and were sentenced to death 
by drowning on September 5. Others were induced 
to admit that infant baptism was right and rebap- 
tism wrong and were released. One of the prisoners 
lay sick in the tower for several months and was swollen 
from head to foot. He preferred to die in the tower with 
his companions rather than in the castle outside. 

The law against entertaining or in any way showing 
favor to Anti-pedobaptists was from this time onward 
rigorously enforced. The local authorities throughout 
the canton were held to their duty as never before. 
Griiningen after long and determined resistance was 



150 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

compelled by the intervention of Berne to yield obedi- 
ence to the Zurich Council. Aggressive work on the 
part of the sectaries had become well-nigh impossible. 
Most of the leaders of the movement were either dead 
or in banishment. Moreover, a land of promise had 
been discovered in Moravia, and thither flocked thou- 
sands of the most aggressive Anti-pedobaptists from Swit- 
zerland, Southern Germany, Silesia, the Tyrol, and 
other countries. By 1529 the Anti-pedobaptist cause in 
Switzerland showed a marked decline; by 1535 only a 
few congregations remained. These were mostly in the 
canton of Berne, where they increased very rapidly from 
1527 onward, and where they became so firmly rooted 
that they have been able to survive in considerable 
numbers to the present time. The Bernese brethren 
represented the purest type of sixteenth century Anti- 
pedobaptism. So closely were they related in doctrine 
and in practice to the Waldenses of the earlier time that 
a recent historian of the movement insists upon their 
direct derivation from the mediaeval evangelicals who are 
known to have abounded in this region in the fifteenth 
century. In no other way is he able to account for the 
persistence with which they have held on their way in the 
face of bitter persecution. He thinks that if the Bernese 
Anabaptists had been a product of the Reformation their 
zeal would have soon subsided, and that like other spas- 
modic movements this would have speedily vanished. 1 

It scarcely need be said that in Roman Catholic coun- 
tries Anti-pedobaptism was regarded as the most radical 
and dangerous type of Protestantism, and was from the 

1 E. Meyer, Gesch. d. Bernischen Taufer, 1895. The author has brought to light 
a vast amount of documentary materia! illustrative of the earlier as well as the later 
history of the Bernese Anti-pedobaptists from the public archives of the canton and 
other sources. While he may be unduly confident as regards the historical con- 
nection of this party with the older evangelical parties, he has presented the facts 
in favor of this view in a most impressive manner. 



EXTENSION OF SWISS INFLUENCE 15 1 

first proscribed. In April, 1529, an Imperial mandate, 
given at the diet of Speier, required, "that rebaptizers 
and rebaptized all and each, male and female, of intelli- 
gent age, be judged and brought from natural life to 
death, without antecedent inquisition of the spiritual 
judges." This law was obligatory upon Protestant and 
Catholic princes alike, and few of either considered it 
too severe. The rigor with which the edict was enforced 
depended, of course, upon the disposition of the indi- 
vidual princes, some of whom, like Philip of Hesse, were 
inclined to moderation ; but that it was for the most part 
zealously carried out the multitude of recorded martyr- 
doms attest. It is stated by a contemporary historian, 1 
that by 1530 two thousand Anti-pedobaptists had been 
executed, nearly all outside of Switzerland. 

Anti-pedobaptists had become as widely diffused 
throughout Europe as the Waldenses and related par- 
ties had been during the thirteenth and following cen- 
turies. There were few communities in which they did 
not appear in greater or smaller numbers ; while in many 
places they met with wonderful popular acceptance and 
could be suppressed only by long-continued and rigorous 
inquisitorial procedures. Of these multitudes a very 
large proportion owed their impulse to the Anti-pedobap- 
tists of Switzerland and of Waldshut, who from 1525 
were widely scattered by persecution. The influence of 
Miinzer and Storch can also be traced with some dis- 
tinctness in scattered chiliastic Anti-pedobaptist teachers 
and congregations. Hans Hut was the principal propa- 
gator of this type of doctrine in Austria and Southern 
Germany. Doubtless many individuals came inde- 
pendently to Anti-pedobaptist views from a study of the 
Scriptures. That a considerable proportion of the great 
Anti-pedobaptist host which in an incredibly short time 

1 Sebastian Franck. 



152 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

was arrayed against Protestantism as decidedly as against 
Roman Catholicism had been previously under the in- 
fluence of mediaeval evangelical teaching, a comparison of 
the doctrines and the manner of life and work of the 
two parties renders highly probable. 

To give in detail the history of this important and in- 
teresting movement -in all its branches and during the 
entire period of its persistence is manifestly impractica- 
ble. Contemporary documentary materials abound and 
are being continually made more available by the zeal 
of European scholars, both Protestant and Catholic, and 
by the liberality of governments, municipalities, and 
societies. We shall be compelled to restrict ourselves 
to a few of the great centers of Anti-pedobaptist activity, 
and in these to the briefest statement of the more 
essential facts. 

Literature : Pertinent works (as in Bibliography) of Egli, Strickler, 
Heberle, Strasser, Nitsche, Burrage, Schaff, Baur, Keller, Usteri, 
Stahelin, E. Muller, Loserth, Kessler, Gast, Bullinger, Fiisslin, 
Beck, Cornelius, Hosek, Schreiber, Zwingli, and Hubmaier. 



CHAPTER XII 
SILESIA 

SILESIA, bounded by Poland, Moravia, Bohemia, 
Brandenburg, and Saxony, had been greatly in- 
fluenced by mediaeval evangelical movements (Hussites, 
Bohemian Brethren, and Waldenses), and was sure to 
be among the earliest regions to adopt the more radical 
phases of the Protestant revolution. It is probable that 
Nicholas Storch spent a few months at Glogau and in 
the surrounding regions soon after the disastrous termina- 
tion of the Peasants' War in May, 1525. 

Lutheranism had already gained a considerable follow- 
ing in Silesia, and Storch is said to have begun his work 
by teaching the evangelical truths that he held in com- 
mon with Luther, reserving his peculiar doctrines until he 
should have gained sufficient prestige to assure their 
popular acceptance. His influence is said to have ex- 
tended to Fraustadt, which afterward became the center 
of his activity. Here as elsewhere the labors of Storch 
are said to have occasioned considerable commotion, and 
he was not able to remain long in the same place ; but 
so great was his enthusiasm and such claims did he make 
for his teachings that multitudes are said to have accepted 
his leadership. 

While in the succeeding years occasional indications of 
the influence of the Storch-Miinzer type of teaching ap- 
pear, the preponderating element in the important Anti- 
pedobaptist movement of 1525 onward was undoubtedly 
of the Swiss type. That the Swiss brethren, who had 
Silesians among them at an early date (1526) and who 
were widely scattered by persecution, from 1526 onward, 

153 



154 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

should have had representatives in Silesia was what 
might have been expected. 

Before entering upon a discussion of the Anti-pedobap- 
tist movement that was to furnish its thousands of re- 
cruits to the great Moravian brotherhood, mention should 
be made of the mystical reforming movement led by 
Caspar Schwenckfeldt. 

Of the influence of this Silesian nobleman in causing 
a widespread departure from the Lutheran type of teach- 
ing and a general adoption in evangelical circles of Anti- 
pedobaptist views we can speak with far more confidence 
than of Storch's Silesian activity. Schwenckfeldt be- 
longed to an ancient noble house at Ossig. He studied 
in several universities, finishing his studies at Cologne. 
Like Luther he was an ardent student of the old-evan- 
gelical mysticism of Tauler, the German Theology, etc. 
While residing at the court of Duke Charles of Mun- 
sterberg he came under the influence of the teachings 
of Huss. When Luther came out boldly for reform, 
Schwenckfeldt was ready to accept his leadership. 

In 1 521 he retired for a season of profound Scripture 
study. In 1525 he became convinced that Luther was 
astray on baptism, the Lord's Supper, justification by 
faith, and a number of other points. A conference with 
Luther failed to result in harmony of views. Not only 
was he at variance with Luther in reference to doctrine, 
but he took sharp issue with him as regards the manner 
of bringing about reform. Reformation should proceed 
from within outward, without the intervention of the 
civil authorities. 

He soon came to feel that the tendency of Luther's 
teachings was to bring about a state of carnal security in 
those who accepted them, and that his doctrine of justi- 
fication by faith alone and that of assurance were im- 
moral in their tendencies. His observation of Lutheran 



CASPAR SCHWENCKFELDT 155 

evangelical life led him to the conviction that Lutheran 
faith was a dead faith, that Luther's doctrine of Scripture 
was a doctrine of the letter and not of the spirit, that 
his teaching respecting baptism and the Supper was un- 
scriptural and out of accord with the principles of spiritual 
Christianity. He maintained, moreover, that Luther had 
departed widely from the position he had occupied when 
he first appeared as a reformer. 

He held that only the spiritually enlightened man can 
properly understand the Scriptures, and he distinguished 
between the word of God and the material Scriptures 
that contain this word. Faith he regarded as the per- 
sonal appropriation of Chnst, and it necessarily involved 
a complete transformation of character. Baptism he re- 
garded as symbolical of the great inner transformation 
that has occurred in regeneration, and hence as utterly 
inapplicable to infants. The Lord's Supper he took to 
be symbolical of the spiritual partaking of Christ, and 
communion with his sufferings and death. 

The Duke of Leignitz, one of the most influential of 
the Silesian nobility, sympathized with Schwenckfeldt's 
anti-Lutheran views of reform. There soon resulted a 
general falling away from the Lutheran position and 
large numbers openly adopted Anti-pedobaptist views. 

Schwenckfeldt was too much of a mystic to be willing 
to be the leader of a radical reforming party or to lay so 
great stress upon external ordinances as was involved 
in the Anti-pedobaptist position, but he continued to the 
end of a long life in friendly relations with the Anti-pedo- 
baptists, and his influence during the earlier time in 
Silesia, as well as during his later life when he made 
Strasburg his home, was highly favorable to the popular 
acceptance of their principles. " Hoffmann and the Ana- 
baptists," he said on one occasion when accused of un- 
due intimacy with that great leader, 



156 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

I patronize not more than is in accord with the spirit of Christ. 
. . . That I now subject myself to no party and sect, neither to the 
Papists, Lutherans, Zwinglians, nor Baptisvs, has many causes and 
brings me not a little persecution and ill-will from them all. But I 
pray the Lord he will keep me in this position and not allow me to 
despise what is good, right, and well pleasing. Yet I see in one 
party much more of God than in the rest, more divinely given bless- 
edness and imitation of the crucified Christ ; this I cannot deny. 

There can be no doubt as to the party to which he 
gave so decided a preference. He justified his separa- 
tion on the ground, 

That it is a necessity to the Christian that he touch no unclean 
thing, and that he be not yoked together with unbelievers, nor have 
communion with the works of darkness. 

Schwenckfeldt had no thought of forming a sect, but 
a considerable number of those who had been dominated 
by his teachings gathered themselves after his death into 
a society for the circulation of his writings and the con- 
servation of his influence. In 1734 a number of families 
settled in Pennsylvania, where they still have four con- 
gregations with a membership of about three hundred and 
six. Schwenckfeldt died in 1562. 

The encouragement given to Anti-pedobaptism by 
Schwenckfeldt and the noblemen who supported him, 
and a natural predilection of the masses for radical types 
of religious thought, resulted in a very rapid growth of 
the cause. Hast (following Meschovius) doubtless grossly 
exaggerates when he states that by 1526 Silesia had 
become almost entirely Anti-pedobaptist ; yet we have 
abundant evidence that thousands adopted Anti-pedo- 
baptist views and that congregations were organized in 
many of the most important towns as well as in many 
villages and rural communities. 

By far the most important leader at this time (1526-28) 



GABRIEL ASCHERHAM 1 57 

was Gabriel Ascherham of Scharding. This Bavarian 
evangelist, of whose earlier antecedents little or nothing 
is known, was instrumental in the conversion of hun- 
dreds, if not thousands, of Silesians to Anti-pedobaptist 
views and in the organization of many congregations. 
When persecution arose (1527-28) he led a large party to 
Rossnitz in Moravia. He was followed later by hundreds 
more, the number of his Silesian followers in Moravia 
having reached, according to some accounts, about two 
thousand. The strife that arose between Gabriel and 
the Hutherites has resulted in an unjust loss of reputation 
for the Silesian leader, as the accounts that have been 
preserved emanated from his opponents. That he was 
strong-willed, somewhat arbitrary, and over-violent in 
his polemics, may be freely admitted ; but the same 
might be said of most of the great leaders of the age. 

Among the influential teachers of this time were Os- 
wald and Hess in Breslau, where a congregation seems 
to have been organized. This community seems to have 
been visited by Hans Hut in 1527. Congregations existed 
in and around Leignitz, Glatz, and Glogau. These bore 
marks of the influence of Storch. 1 In Glatz and 
Schweidnitz the Anti-pedobaptists came forward in 1529 
as a " League of Jesus Christ," and asked the princely 
and local authorities for the opportunity to explain and 
defend their principles under a safe-conduct. This re- 
quest was refused and served only to increase the vigi- 
lance of the authorities and to sharpen the measures 
already being employed for the extirpation of the party. 

According to a manuscript in the Vienna Court Library, 
Clemens Adler, the most important Silesian leader of the 
time, was executed at Glogau in 1636. According to the 
Presburg manuscript, he was master of three languages, 

1 Dr. Loserth is of the opinion that these had nothing to do with those Anti-pedo- 
baptists who went to Moravia under the leadership of Gabriel. 



158 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Latin, Bohemian, and German. For some time he was 
engaged as a preacher in Bohemia. Moved by the Lord 
he came one day into the church at Glatz, silenced the 
preacher and himself preached for an hour. He was 
however driven from the city. Another leader of the 
Anti-pedobaptists in the city of Breslau and its environs 
was Hans Reck (Giganteus), well known through the 
controversy that he had with Dr. Hess, in connection 
with which he wrote (in Latin) his "Judgment on the 
Faith of Infants, to Dr. Joh. Hess." He also wrote a 
refutation of Justus Menius' strictures on the Anti- 
pedobaptists. 

Andrew von Nespe is spoken of as an apostle of the 
Silesian Anti-pedobaptists. He labored successfully at 
Heilbron on the Neckar, in Wirtemberg, and in Bavaria, 
and finally suffered martyrdom at Neustadt on the Dan- 
ube. The most important individual contribution of 
Silesia to the Anti-pedobaptist cause was undoubtedly 
Peter Reidemann, who, after laboring for a time in upper 
Austria, removed to Moravia and became head of the 
Hutherite connection. He wrote the best systematic ex- 
position of the doctrines and practices of the party. 

After 1528-29 the persecuting measures of the Silesian 
authorities were too exterminating in their nature to 
allow of the building up of vigorous church organizations, 
but fostered by the brethren in Moravia the cause was 
long kept alive. Schwenckfeldt was himself obliged to 
quit Silesia in 1528, the noblemen who favored his cause 
being no longer able to protect him. 

Literature: Meschovius, Bachmann, Erbkam, and Hast, as in the 
Bibliography. For some of the details the writer is indebted to 
Professor Dr. J. Loserth, of the University of Graz, Austria, who 
in a private communication generously imparted much information 
not otherwise procurable. 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE AUGSBURG CENTER 

AUGSBURG was one of the great commercial centers 
of the Reformation time. It was favorably situ- 
ated for trade with Italy, Austria, and all parts of central 
Germany. Its merchants were among the most enter- 
prising in the world and had their ships on all the seas. 
Augsburg profited largely by the discovery of the new 
world and the great increase of commerce with the 
Orient. Manufactures kept pace with foreign trade. In 
a population of about thirty thousand there were nearly 
fifteen hundred master weavers. As in the Middle Ages 
Augsburg was an important center of old-evangelical 
life, so in the Reformation time, side by side with Stras- 
burg, it was a refuge for the persecuted and a place 
where any radical teacher might hope to gain followers. 
The bitter and long-continued conflict in Augsburg be- 
tween the Lutheran and Zwinglian types of doctrine 
prevented the establishment of any complete or vigor- 
ously administered church order. Among the evangelical 
ministers no man arose who was able to mold the relig- 
ious life of the city. 

Augsburg received into its bosom at an early date 
representatives of the movement led by Storch and 
Miinzer and those who had received their training in 
Anti-pedobaptist principles in Switzerland. Of mystical 
and fanatical types it had its full share. In no city of 
upper Germany was there so large an aggregation of 
Anti-pedobaptist life. Not only did Augsburg receive 
from abroad large numbers of representatives of the great 
Anti-pedobaptist movement, but its own inhabitants, 

i59 



160 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

among whom the artisan classes abounded, showed re- 
markable readiness to accept what claimed to be pure 
apostolic Christianity. Situated on the road between 
Strasburg and Moravia, two other great centers of the 
movement, it formed a sort of distributing point for the 
Anti-pedobaptist life of the time. Most of the prominent 
leaders spent more or less time here, and several of 
them made a profound impression on the religious life of 
the city. Among those who barely touched the city 
with their personal influence was Hubmaier, who spent a 
few days there on his way to Moravia. Among those 
who made Augsburg a definite field for labor may be 
mentioned Hans Denck, Jacob Gross, Hans Hut, and 
Eitelhans Langenmantel. Not only did Augsburg furnish 
a place of refuge for persecuted sectaries, but it was 
also a center from which streams of influence went 
forth. 

Among the earliest laborers in the Anti-pedobaptist 
cause in Augsburg were Hans Denck and Ludwig Hetzer. 
The latter though not yet an avowed Anti-pedobaptist was 
already a somewhat zealous propagator of Anti-pedobap- 
tist views. We have met him before in Zurich, where 
for some time he worked diligently with tongue and pen 
side by side with Zwingli in the cause of evangelical 
reform. At a later date we find him among those who 
were banished by the Zurich Council for opposing infant 
baptism. He had a profound sympathy for the poor and 
oppressed and was eager for social no less than for 
religious reform. He was befriended during his earlier 
visit to Augsburg by Georg Regel, a wealthy gentleman 
temporarily resident there. His wife Anna, under Hetzer's 
influence, afterward became an Anabaptist and it was on 
the pretext of suspicious relations with this woman that 
Hetzer was beheaded at Constance in 1529. During his 
later residence in Augsburg he supported himself chiefly 



LUDWIG HETZER l6l 

by serving as a corrector of the press and by literary 
work. He translated from time to time a number of 
books written in Latin by leading Reformers, besides 
publishing a number of original works. 

It was probably in the autumn of 1525 that he pub- 
lished his famous pamphlet on "Evangelical Cups." 
This is one of the strongest pleas for abstinence from 
intoxicants that appeared during the Reformation time. 
Undoubtedly excessive drinking was common among the 
evangelical clergy. In assemblies which they called 
evangelical the social cup was freely, often immoderately, 
indulged in. "No Christian," writes Hetzer, "should 
suffer that to be called evangelical which is antagonistic 
to the gospel. Many indeed think that ' moderate drink- 
ing ' is quite allowable. If one does not vomit at the 
table he is said to have ' drunk moderately ' even if he 
has drunk three measures of wine." He thinks that 
Bacchus and not Christ is the influence that brings 
them together in such assemblies, and that the utterances 
at such meetings are often inspired not by the Spirit of 
God but by the emptied beer glasses and cups. In such 
gatherings there may be volubility, but no true elo- 
quence. By way of contrast he describes the gatherings 
of true Christians. He lays much stress upon the love- 
feasts of the early Christians in which rich and poor sat 
down together to food provided by the rich. " Now we 
should know that Christian life and faith are a mere 
sham . . . where there is no love or this is cold in us. 
Faith deals with God, but also through expression in 
works of love toward our neighbors." 

Hetzer's disinclination toward infant baptism was due 
quite as much to his observation of the evil results of its 
adoption as to its lack of scriptural warrant. "The 
pope's book," he says, " in which I read that they have 
ascribed blessedness to external water baptism, led me 



162 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

to reject infant baptism." "Oh, how many pious mothers 
have been made miserable who have had no other 
thought than that unbaptized infants are damned. . . 
Also the special places of burial where unbaptized in- 
fants are not buried along with other people simply 
because they shall no more see God's face ! Oh, the 
knavery ! " 

His position was one of wavering and indecision. We 
find him in September, 1525, seeking to re-establish him- 
self in the confidence of Zwingli. He was then at 
Augsburg where he was zealously defending the Zwin- 
glian view of the Supper against the Lutherans. Expelled 
from Augsburg we find him in November in Basel with 
OEcolampadius, whom he seems to have convinced that 
he was not an Anti-pedobaptist, and whom he induced to 
write to Zwingli to this effect. Yet he continued to labor 
in a somewhat secret way against infant baptism. 

The influence of Hans Denck, his intimate friend and 
associate in Bible translation, it is easier to estimate. 
Next to Hubmaier we must regard Denck as the foremost 
leader of the Anti-pedobaptists. In scholarship and the 
profundity of his grasp of truth he was probably Hub- 
maier's superior. We first meet with him in Basel, 
where he was employed by one of the leading publishers 
as a corrector of the press, and where he was intimately 
associated with OEcolampadius. In 1523, on the recom- 
mendation of the latter, he was appointed rector of the 
St. Sebaldus school of Niirnberg. It is probable that he 
met Miinzer on the occasion of his first visit to Niirnberg, 
and may have been somewhat influenced by this enthu- 
siastic spirit. Besides being one of the foremost masters 
of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, he was like Luther, 
Carlstadt, Miinzer, Schwenckfeldt, and many other lead- 
ing men of the time, deeply imbued with the evangelical 
mysticism of the Middle Ages. In fact, he was a mystic 



HANS DENCK 163 

himself of the highest type ; but his mysticism was tem- 
pered by the profoundest knowledge of Scripture and the 
profoundest reverence for its teachings. At Nurnberg 
he fell into controversy with the famous Lutheran theo- 
logian Osiander on the doctrine of the Supper; but the 
doctrines of Scripture, sin, the righteousness of God, the 
law, the gospel, and baptism, ultimately came forward as 
matters of dispute. His highly spiritualistic conception 
of the Divine nature, of Scripture, of faith, and of the 
ordinances, were taken by his opponents to involve a 
practical setting aside of historical Christianity. He was 
accused, moreover, of denying that obedience was due 
to the civil magistracy and of maintaining the right and 
duty of a Christian man or woman to put away an un- 
believing spouse and to marry a believer. Arraigned 
before the authorities at the instigation of the intolerant 
Osiander, he asked to be allowed to set forth his views 
in writing. His " Protestation and Confession" embodied 
the chief points on which he found himself at variance 
with Lutheranism. In this important document we find 
the germs of the system that he afterward wrought out 
with such beauty and eloquence. Driven from Nurn- 
berg, he seems to have spent some months in retirement, 
maturing and giving careful expression to his views. 

We next meet him in St. Gall in the following June, 
while the Anti-pedobaptist movement was at its height, 
but he seems to have taken no public part in the agita- 
tion. He made a strong impression upon Vadian, who 
wrote to Zwingli : " In Denck, that most gifted youth, 
all excellences were truly so present that he even sur- 
passed his age and seemed greater than himself, but he 
has so abused his genius as to defend with great zeal 
Origen's opinion concerning the liberation and salvation 
of the damned." 

At this period he seems to have been so carried away 



164 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

by the thought of God's infinite love and mercy and to 
have urged this aspect of truth so eloquently upon those 
with whom he came in contact, that they could scarcely 
resist the conviction that the final salvation of all might 
be in accord with the Divine purpose. To give a detailed 
account of Denck's writings and of his system is mani- 
festly impracticable in a work like the present. 

A few quotations will suffice to give some idea of the 
quality of his theological thinking : 

Faith is obedience to God and confidence in his promise through 
Jesus Christ. Where this obedience is lacking this confidence is 
false and illusory. But the obedience must be genuine, that is, 
heart, mouth, and act must go together as far as possible. 

He who has known the truth in Christ Jesus and is obedient to it 
from the heart is free from sin, though not from temptation. He is 
not able to run in the way of God further than he is strengthened 
by God. He who runs more or less fails in truth, obedience, and 
freedom. He who surrenders his will to the will of God is both free 
and fettered. Whose servant one is, the same makes him free in 
doing what he will in his service. God compels no one to remain in 
his service whom love does not compel. The devil is able to compel 
no one to remain in his service who has once known the truth. 
Therefore it makes no difference whether we speak of free or fettered 
will, so long as we recognize the distinctions on both sides. 

God will give to every man according to his works, to the evil 
eternal punishment according to his righteousness, to the good eter- 
nal life according to his mercy. Not that he is under obligation, if 
he should reckon rigorously. But he pays us out of the promise 
that he has given to us beforehand. He looks upon faith and 
good works, regards them as well-pleasing, and rewards them. Not 
that they originate with us, but that we have not received in vain or 
rejected the grace which he has provided for us. It is all of one 
treasury, which is truly good, namely, from the Word which from 
the beginning was with God and in the last times has become flesh. 

The Holy Scripture I esteem above human treasures, but not so 
highly as the Word of God, which is living, powerful, and eternal, 
which is separate and pure from the elements of this world, since it is 
God himself, spirit and not letter, written without pen and paper, so 
that it can never be blotted out. Therefore also blessedness is not 



DENCK'S TEACHINGS 165 

bound up in Scripture, however useful and good it may always be in 
that direction. It is not possible for Scripture to make better a bad 
heart ; but a pious heart is bettered by all things. A man who is 
chosen by God may attain to blessedness without preaching, without 
Scripture. 

The broken law God himself has fulfilled. Perfect resignation to 
God's will, so that when we ask for wisdom we shall be willing that 
God should give us foolishness, is necessary to any proper conver- 
sion. So long as we will not leave blessedness out of our own 
hands it cannot come to us. So long as we strive to escape con- 
demnation it continues to hang about our necks. Should one say, I 
am willing for God's sake to forego blessedness and to have damna- 
tion, yet God could not show himself toward him otherwise than he 
is, namely, good, and must give him the best and noblest that he 
has, that is, himself. 

The voice of my heart, of which I assuredly know that it renders 
the truth, says to me that God is righteous and merciful, and this 
voice speaks in every good heart distinctly and intelligibly, the more 
distinctly and clearly the better each one is. 

His ideas as to the righteousness and mercy of God did 
not permit him to believe that God would remain forever 
unreconciled with his enemies or would punish them 
eternally. Punishment in this life and the life to come 
he looked upon as designed to convince men of their folly 
and to bring them into the path of obedience. 

It might have been expected that Denck's mysticism 
would make him indifferent to external ordinances, and 
that he would decline, like Schwenckfeldt, to throw him- 
self heartily into the separatist movement ; yet he was 
thoroughly convinced that infant baptism was not only 
unscriptural, but was also one of the principal bulwarks 
of the State-church systems that so obstructed Christian 
freedom. He became, after Hubmaier's departure to 
Moravia, the most influential Anti-pedobaptist leader. 
Bucer calls him the Anabaptist " pope " ; Urban Rhegius 
their " abbot." Haller designates him " the Anabaptist 
Apollo " ; Gynorseus, " the head of the Anabaptists." 



166 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

At Augsburg, where Denck seems to have arrived in 
October or November, 1525, he enjoyed the friendship 
of the young nobleman, Sebastian von Freiburg, and of 
Georg Regel. His powerful personality soon drew 
around him a large number of those who had predilec- 
tions for evangelical mysticism, and were out of sympa- 
thy with Romanism, Lutheranism, and Zwinglianism, 
which were strenuously contending with each other for 
the mastery. Hetzer seems to have left Augsburg before 
Denck's arrival. It is certain that most of those upon 
whom he had brought his influence to bear became fol- 
lowers of Denck and constituted the nucleus of the 
organization that was soon to be formed. Denck sup- 
ported himself at this time by giving instruction to the 
sons of burghers in Latin and Greek, and must have 
devoted considerable time to writing. His most important 
work on " The Law of God " was probably written, or 
at least completed, after his arrival in Augsburg. 

It was probably through the influence of Hubmaier, 
who visited Augsburg about June, 1526, on his way to 
Moravia, that Denck decided to organize the Anti-pedo- 
baptist life of the city into a church. It is likely that 
Hubmaier influenced others during this visit. He con- 
ferred with the leading evangelical ministers, Gynorasus 
and Urban Rhegius, and no doubt sought to win them to 
his position. According to the report of the first of 
these, Hubmaier found little satisfaction in Denck's 
mystical views. The organization under Denck's leader- 
ship was formed soon after Hubmaier's visit, for it is 
mentioned in a letter from Gynorasus, August 22, as 
already an accomplished fact. The efforts of Rhegius 
and others to convince Denck of his errors in doctrine 
and in practice were eminently unsuccessful. After 
discussing with them the points at issue for some hours 
he suddenly broke off, convinced that no useful result 



HANS HUT 167 

could be reached. When it was proposed to have him 
appear before the council to answer charges made against 
him, he quietly departed. This occurred in the autumn 
of 1526. The Anti-pedobaptist community seems already 
to have numbered some hundreds. He was to return to 
Augsburg after a period of similar labors in Strasburg 
and Worms. 

Hans Hut was probably the first who received baptism 
at Denck's hands in Augsburg. As early as 1 521, Hut, 
who was then sacristan to the knight Hans von Bibra, 
was imprisoned for refusing to have his babe baptized. 
He afterward spent some time in Nurnberg, where he 
learned bookbinding and one or two other trades, and 
where he seems to have become acquainted with Denck. 
We next find him in Wittenberg engaged in the book 
business. He entered the camp of the peasants' army 
under Miinzer just before the disastrous battle of Frank- 
enhausen and was taken prisoner by the Hessian troops. 
Claiming to have been among the peasants not as a 
soldier but as a bookseller, he was released. It is prob- 
able, however, that he had already adopted Munzer's 
chiliastic views and that his real purpose in going to 
Frankenhausen was to have part in what he expected 
would be a great manifestation of Divine power on be- 
half of Miinzer and the peasants. After leaving Frank- 
enhausen he went to Bibra, where he is said to have 
preached, in the spirit of Miinzer, that the subjects 
should smite all magistrates to death. He believed him- 
self to have been specially commissioned by God to 
interpret the prophecies to the people of his time, and to 
proclaim the approaching end of the age and the setting 
up of a kingdom of righteousness through the slaughter 
of the ungodly. 

With consuming zeal he labored for the propagation of 
his views. While he did not during his later ministry 



168 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

counsel the people to take up the sword and proceed 
immediately to slay the ungodly, he taught them to be 
ready to obey whenever God should make known to 
them that the appointed time had come. He possessed 
a striking and powerful personality and easily gained the 
enthusiastic confidence of the oppressed classes, who 
believed him to be endowed with supernatural powers 
and readily accepted his grotesque interpretation of the 
Scriptures. His labors extended over a vast territory. 

In Moravia he attempted to gain the Nikolsburg Church, 
of which Hubmaier was pastor, to his views. He was 
vanquished by Hubmaier and speedily withdrew. Styria, 
Tyrol, Breslau, Salzburg, Wiirzburg, and other localities, 
were profoundly moved by his personal labors. So irre- 
sistible was his influence that a few hours' stay in a place 
often sufficed to establish a community pledged to his 
principles. In the intensity of his zeal and the fervor of 
his eloquence he has been compared with the Old Testa- 
ment prophets. The terribly corrupting influence of this 
man on the Anti-pedobaptist cause can be readily sur- 
mised. 

Hut's influence on the Augsburg Anti-pedobaptists was 
considerable ; but it is not to be supposed that those who 
had become deeply imbued with the evangelical mysti- 
cism of Denck, or the soundly biblical teachings of Hub- 
maier, were carried away by this wild enthusiasm. Hut 
did not remain long at a time in Augsburg, but visited 
the city often enough to keep his hand on the movement. 

In October, 1527, he was thrown into prison by the 
Augsburg Council. It was asserted at the time that he 
made a desperate effort to escape by firing his cell and 
then giving the alarm. The fire advanced so rapidly that 
he was mortally burned before the guard arrived. He 
died a few days after ; but his trial proceeded, he was 
duly condemned, and his dead body was burned on De- 



EITELHANS LANGENMANTEL 169 

cember 7, 1527. We have laid more stress upon the 
errors of Hut than upon those evangelical elements in 
his teaching that were common to him and the sounder 
Anti-pedobaptists of the time. 

If Thomas Munzer's influence was kept alive and mul- 
tiplied by the enthusiastic labors of Hut, that of Denck 
was perpetuated in Augsburg not only through his pub- 
lished writings but also through a number of faithful 
disciples. The most noted of these was Eitelhans Lan- 
genmantel, a member of one of the oldest and most 
distinguished patrician families and son of one of the 
most illustrious citizens. After spending years abroad 
he returned to Augsburg and became early an enthusi- 
astic defender of Zwingli's doctrine of the Supper in 
opposition to Luther's. He seems to have been baptized 
by Hut early in 1527. Without the learning and the 
profound philosophical grasp of Denck, or the wonderful 
popular power of Hut, his social position and his enthusi- 
astic devotion to the Anti-pedobaptist cause constituted 
him one of the most influential leaders of the party. His 
anti-Lutheran writings showed a strong leaning toward 
the Anabaptist position. His view of the Supper differs 
from that of Zwingli in being more mystical, or in laying 
more stress upon the personal attitude of the believer 
toward Christ. He objected strongly to having the ordi- 
nances administered by the evangelical clergy for money. 
The ministers of the word should rather learn to trust in 
God. In 1526 he declared the "new papists" to be 
worse than the old. He accused the evangelical clergy 
of avarice. Not the slightest service will they render, 
he said, without pay, even for the very poor. 

As an Anti-pedobaptist he came out boldly in defense 
of his principles. His work entitled, "A Divine and 
thorough Revelation of the true Anabaptists," was ad- 
dressed to the brethren and sisters of the whole world. 



170 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

The treatise is, like his earlier writings, strongly polemi- 
cal against the evangelicals, and sets forth the views of 
the Anti-pedobaptists in the spirit of Denck rather than 
in that of Hut, yet without the excessive mysticism of 
the former. 

Early in September, 1527, Denck returned to Augs- 
burg, having spent the intervening months in Strasburg, 
Zabern, Landau, and Worms, in quietly propagating his 
principles and, in company with Hetzer, translating from 
the Hebrew the prophetical books of the Old Testament. 
This translation was published in Worms shortly before 
Denck's departure, and so great was its popularity that 
in three years not fewer than thirteen editions appeared. 
Its fidelity to the original and its literary excellence give 
it a high place among versions, and although Luther dis- 
couraged its circulation he was not above making consid- 
erable use of it in the preparation of his own version. 

Soon after Denck's return to Augsburg the Anti-pedo- 
baptist cause may be said to have reached the height 
of its prosperity. Its numbers reached at this time 
about eleven hundred. Baptism by immersion is said to 
have been regularly practised, the houses in which it was 
administered being indicated by bathing dresses hung out 
in front. 

Shortly after Denck's return we find an extraordinarily 
large number of Anti-pedobaptist leaders in the city. 
Indeed, it was commonly believed and is highly probable 
that a great convention was held in Augsburg at this time. 
Among the visitors were the following : Hetzer; Kautz, a 
highly educated and eloquent young evangelical preacher 
who had been won for the Anti-pedobaptist cause by 
Denck and Hetzer at Worms, and who carried some of 
Denck's unsound views to harsher expression than would 
have been possible for Denck himself ; Hut ; Jacob Gross, 
of Waldshut, a faithful disciple of Hubmaier, whose labors 



ANTI-PEDOBAPTIST CONVENTION 171 

in the Griiningen district of Zurich have already been 
noticed ; Sigmund Salminger, an ex-monk from Munich, 
one of the pastors or bishops of the Augsburg commu- 
nity; Jacob Dachser, an ex-monk from Ingolstadt, who 
had also attained to a leading position among the Augs- 
burg Anabaptists; Hans Gulden, of Biberack; Ulrich 
Trechsel; Peter Sheppach; Gregory Maler, of Chur; and 
Hans Bechelknecht, of Basel. 

At about the same time the council, under the influ- 
ence of the principal evangelical minister, Urban Rhegius, 
and under strong pressure from without, began to take 
energetic steps against the now flourishing and aggressive 
Anti-pedobaptist party. On August 25 Jacob Dachser 
was imprisoned. On September 15 a meeting was raided 
and Gross, Salminger, and Hut were seized. Through 
information extorted from some of these many more were 
soon afterward imprisoned, among them Langenmantel. 

Of the large number arrested some were dismissed on 
promising to abandon their Anti-pedobaptist activity. 
About forty were steadfast. Among the prisoners were 
two members of the council, Vischer and Widholz. On 
September 6 Rhegius had published a reply to Langen- 
mantel's polemic. On October 9 the council issued a 
sharp mandate against the withholding of infants from 
baptism, rebaptism, unauthorized religious assemblies, 
and the harboring of foreign Anti-pedobaptists. 

Several of the prisoners were tortured in order that 
evidence of evil deeds and purposes on the part of the 
sectaries might be secured. It was probably under tor- 
ture that Hut gave the full account of his activity that 
has been preserved. Damaging evidence against the 
imprisoned was industriously gathered from other cities. 
Beyond the facts that have already been mentioned re- 
garding Hut's somewhat fanatical procedures, little that 
was discreditable could be discovered. It was com- 



172 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

monly believed that Hut had established a secret league 
among his followers, and that he was industriously 
making preparations for the slaughtering of the ruling 
classes and for the setting up of a kingdom of righteous- 
ness and equality. During the early months of 1528 
many arrests were made, the penalties for the most 
part being fines and banishment. 

In Swabia, Bavaria, and Franconia exterminating 
measures against the Anabaptists were enacted in Feb- 
ruary, 1528. The Swabian League determined that each 
of the four quarters should maintain one hundred men 
for their suppression. The edict of Speier, with its san- 
guinary requirements, followed in April, 1529. 

The tragic fate of Hut has already been mentioned. 
Langenmantel was allowed to go into banishment, but in 
his retirement he was seized and executed, with his 
attendants, May 12, 1528. Denck and Hetzer withdrew 
before the outbreak of the persecution. Denck went to 
Basel early in October, 1527, ill and discouraged. He 
died a few weeks later at the house of OEcolampadius 
after having made a conciliatory statement of his views 
sometimes erroneously represented as a recantation. 

The party was too firmly rooted in Augsburg to sue 
cumb at once to persecuting measures. Of the ban 
ished more than one hundred sought refuge in Strasburg 
where exterminating persecution was longer delayed 
Many found their way to Moravia. For years there was 
a remnant of Anti-pedobaptist life that from time to time 
came to the notice of the authorities ; but as a move- 
ment it was practically at an end by 1530. 

Literature : Works of Denck, Hetzer, and Urbanus Rhegius ; per- 
tinent monographs and articles of Jorg, Roth, C. Meyer, Keim, 
Keller, Hagen, Erbkam, Winter, Will, Heberle, Trechsel, Frank, 
and Cornelius ("Die Munster, Aufruhr"), as in the Bibliography; 
Dollinger, Die Reformation, I., 195-201; and Uhlhorn, Urb. Rhegius. 



CHAPTER XIV 

HUBMAIER'S MORAVIAN LABORS (i 526-27). 

THE western provinces of Austria, including Styria, 
Salzburg, Carniola, the Tyrol, and the Passau 
region had, since the thirteenth century, been permeated 
with old-evangelical life. Whatever of reforming sen- 
timent appeared in Northern Italy, Switzerland, Southern 
Germany, Bohemia, or Moravia, was pretty sure to find 
its way into these provinces through which ran some of 
the main roads from north to south and from east to west. 
From Switzerland, Southern Germany, and Bavaria Anti- 
pedobaptist influence was brought to bear upon these 
provinces as early as 1525-26. In few lands did it find 
a more responsive soil, or prove so persistent in the face 
of persecution that was meant to be exterminating. 

From 1526 onward Moravia became the center of the 
movement for the entire Austro-Hungarian realm, a refuge 
for the persecuted and a supplier of men and means for 
the carrying forward of the work in the more severely 
persecuted regions. 

It may be worth while to inquire why Moravia was 
about 1526 "a goodly land," where those who were 
striving to renew apostolic Christianity could "live 
cheaply and without persecution." As a result of more 
than a century of religious and political conflict in Bo- 
hemia, with which country Moravia was closely con- 
nected, Moravia had come to have an exceedingly het- 
erogeneous population. Being somewhat removed from 
the center of conflict and the center of government, a 
large proportion of the more radical representatives of 
mediaeval evangelical religion had removed thither from 

173 



174 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Bohemia and other persecuting countries. Catholics, 
Hussites (Utraquists), and Bohemian Brethren were all 
strongly represented among the nobility, and all existed 
side by side in mutual toleration. The rights of the 
Utraquists were guaranteed by treaty. The Brethren 
(Unitas Fratrum) had gained toleration only after fearful 
sufferings for their faith. 

So firmly had the Brethren become established that 
the famous edict of St. James (July 25, 1505) forbidding 
their religious services, the sale of their books, the ad- 
ministration of the ordinances by their ministers, the 
harboring of them by the nobility, etc., and aiming at 
their extirpation, while it was accepted by the Bohemian 
Diet and ruthlessly executed, was rejected by the Mo- 
ravian. A number of the most influential nobles were 
supporters of the Unitas Fratrum. Many others were so 
far indifferent to the points at issue among the various 
parties that they were unwilling to disturb the tranquillity 
of their domains, and to deprive themselves of their most 
valuable subjects for the sake of gratifying king and 
pope. 

The royal authority was remarkably feeble and in- 
effective from 1 5 16 to 1526. Louis II., ten years of age, 
came to the Bohemian-Hungarian throne in 15 16, and 
after years of unsuccessful warfare with the Turks, was 
slain at Mohacz in August, 1526. The Archduke Ferdi- 
nand, who had married a sister of Louis, claimed the 
throne in her right, but it was some time before his au- 
thority was fully recognized. Under such circumstances 
the nobles did each what was right in his own eyes, and 
it is gratifying to know that many of them made good 
use of their freedom. 

Moravia was still a somewhat sparsely settled and un- 
developed country, and had ample room for the thousands 
of skillful and industrious Anti-pedobaptist workmen who 



HUBMAIER AT NIKOLSBURG 175 

from 1526 onward streamed into it from Switzerland, 
Germany, Bavaria, the Tyrol, Styria, Carniola, and even 
from Italy. As the authority of Ferdinand increased, the 
immunity of the Anti-pedobaptists from persecution pro- 
portionately diminished, and we shall see that even in 
this New Jerusalem they had no occasion to forget that 
they were pilgrims and sojourners on earth. 

Hubmaier, after his fearful sufferings at Zurich and 
short visits to Constance, Augsburg, and a number of 
other places on the way, arrived at Nikolsburg, in Mo- 
ravia, about the first of July, 1526. From the beginning, 
whether by virtue of some prearrangement or otherwise 
we are not informed, he enjoyed the favor of Leonard 
and Hans of Lichtenstein, great landed proprietors in 
whose domains Nikolsburg was situated. It is probable 
that the Lichtensteins had been influenced to a consider- 
able extent by Hussitism in one of its forms. From 1524 
they took a deep interest in the movement led by Luther 
and fostered in their domains the new evangelical teaching. 

The chief evangelical preacher in Nikolsburg, when 
Hubmaier arrived, was Hans Spitalmaier, a Bavarian, 
who had as his assistant Oswald Glaidt, a fellow-country- 
man. Glaidt had occupied himself zealously and with 
some success in efforts to secure a good understanding 
between the old and the new-evangelical parties. 

In March, 1526, the Moravian nobleman, John Dub- 
cansky, with the co-operation of several other noblemen, 
had secured a meeting (at Austerlitz) of representatives 
of the Utraquists, Bohemian Brethren, and Lutherans, 
for the purpose of seeking a basis of union. Glaidt took 
prominent part in this meeting, but the most influential 
theologian present was Martin Goschel, formerly suffragan 
bishop at Olmutz, but at this time provost of a nunnery 
at Kanitz, which position, because of its emoluments, he 
continued to hold after his adoption of evangelical views. 



176 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

In 1525 he had married one of the nuns. When com- 
pelled in 1526 to give up the office, he contrived to put 
the control of the property of the cloister into the hands 
of officials who were ready to serve his interests. He 
labored zealously for the promotion of the new-evangel- 
ical teaching and' for the union of all evangelical parties. 
The bishop of Olmutz proceeded energetically against 
him in April, 1526, and finally succeeded in severing his 
connection with the nunnery and its property. He be- 
took himself to Nikolsburg, where he arrived at about 
the same time as Hubmaier, with whom he soon entered 
into very cordial relations, and with whose cause he 
identified himself. 

Oswald Glaidt hospitably entertained Hubmaier on his 
arrival at Nikolsburg, and was soon afterward baptized 
by him. The lords of Lichtenstein were soon won to 
Hubmaier's scheme for the restoration of primitive Chris- 
tianity and in all humility received baptism at his 
hands. 

It is probable that Anti-pedobaptists were already in 
Moravia in considerable numbers before the advent of 
Hubmaier, but we have no definite information with re- 
gard to their activity. 

In Hubmaier the evangelical cause secured a leader 
who in point of learning, character, and personal at- 
tractiveness was without a peer in any of the religious 
parties of Moravia. Multitudes followed the example of 
Lichtenstein and Glaidt, and in a short time from six 
thousand to twelve thousand in Nikolsburg and the sur- 
rounding regions had submitted to believers' baptism. 
The fame of Hubmaier's successful work and of the re- 
ligious liberty that was accorded to Anti-pedobaptists in 
Moravia spread throughout Europe, and large numbers 
soon left the regions in which persecution prevailed for 
this land of promise. 



LITERARY ACTIVITY 1 77 

here also Hubmaier developed a remarkable literary 
activity. Froschauer, a Zurich publisher, took refuge as 
an Anti-pedobaptist in Nikolsburg. Here he was wel- 
comed by Leonard of Lichtenstein, under whose patron- 
age he set up a plant for the publication of Hubmaier's 
writings. Hubmaier seems at this time to have enter- 
tained the hope that many others of the evangelical 
nobility would follow in the footsteps of the Lichten- 
steins. To these noblemen one after another he dedi- 
cated his books in courtly style. Besides making the 
fullest (almost flattering) recognition of the services of 
Hans and Leonard of Lichtenstein, he dedicated works 
to Johann of Pernstein and Helfenstein, the governor- 
general of Moravia, to Arkled of Boskowitz, the chief 
treasurer, and to John Dubcansky, 

He writes in the spirit of a man who has the utmost 
confidence in his cause, and encouraged by the accept- 
ance that the truth has already received hopes to secure 
its general recognition throughout the land. 

In a little more than a year he published not fewer than 
fifteen distinct works. A considerable number of these 
treat of baptism. The first of his Nikolsburg publica- 
tions, issued soon after his arrival, was a critique of 
Zwingli's book on baptism, in which he gave a full 
account of his transactions with Zwingli, and of the 
cruel treatment he had received at the hands of the Zurich 
reformer. The argument is in the form of a dialogue 
between Zwingli and Hubmaier. Our readers are 
already sufficiently familiar with Hubmaier's method of 
dealing with this subject. It is in every respect one of 
the noblest defenses of believers' baptism ever written. 
He closes the book with an eloquent appeal to Zwingli : 

Thou givest to the godless ground to say : See, they bend and 

gloss the Scripture according to their pleasure. With what dost thou 

yet tax the poor brethren and sisters, that thou shouldst fight 
M 



178 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

against them with such groundless weapons? With what dost thou 
tax thine own conscience, which tells thee otherwise? With what 
dost thou tax Christ, that thou shouldst put in the place of his 
words thine own inventions? . . Confess the truth, thou art a cap- 
tive. Abolish the miserable prisons, cease from hunting down pious 
brethren and sisters, from prisons and stocks, from blocks and 
from drowning. God grant thee grace that thou mayest again, as 
once thou didst, apprehend his plain, clear, pure word, and mayest 
walk according thereto. 

Shortly afterward he published a pamphlet entitled 
"Judgment of Ancient and Modern Teachers, that 
Young Children Should Not be Baptized until they have 
been Instructed in the Faith." This he dedicated to the 
Provost Martin Goschel, of whose relations to the author 
mention has already been made. Of ancient writers, he 
cites Origen, Basil, Athanasius, Tertullian, Jerome, 
Cyril, Theophylact, Eusebius, and the Corpus Juris Can- 
onici ; of moderns, Erasmus, Luther, OEcolampadius, 
Zwingli, Judae, Hofmeister, Hagendorf, Hetzer, and 
Cellarius. His dedication contains a sober but forceful 
arraignment of the Roman Catholic Church, of whose 
terrible corruptions he and Goschel alike had the amplest 
personal knowledge. The book contains a summary in 
catechetical form of what a person should know before 
baptism. In compliment to Leonard and Hans of Lichten- 
stein he introduces their names as questioner and an- 
swerer, and calls them "lovers of the holy gospel." 
" Where water baptism according to the ordination of 
Christ has not been again instituted, there one knows 
not who is brother or sister, there is no church, no fra- 
ternal discipline or correction, no exclusion, no Supper," 
etc. The Supper is declared to be 

A public sign and testimony of the love through which Christians 
oblige themselves before the church, just as they together break 
the bread and drink the cup, so also to give up their lives and their 
blood for each other, and this according to the example of Christ, 



HUBMAIER ON BAPTISM AND THE SUPPER 1 79 

whose suffering they memorialize in the breaking of the bread. 
Bread and wine are not the body and blood of Christ, but mere 
memorials of the suffering and death of Christ for the remission of 
our sins, the greatest sign of his love that he has left us. 

Christians should fast daily, that is, should eat and 
drink in moderation with thanksgiving and without dis- 
tinction of foods. All opprobrious words are to be 
avoided by Christians. As regards Sabbath observance, 
man's whole life should be a continuous Sabbath. The 
idea of sacred times and seasons found no place in his 
system. 

His next writing was entitled " Ground and Reason 
that every Person Who has been Baptized in His Infancy 
is Under Obligation to be Baptized According to the 
Ordinance of Christ, though He Were a Hundred Years 
Old." The aim of the writing was to influence the mul- 
titude of Christians who acknowledged that there is no 
scriptural ground for infant baptism and yet declined to 
submit to believers' baptism, and who were, as he says, 
hanging like Absalom between heaven and earth, to take 
the decisive step in obedience to Christ's command. 

His answer to OEcolampadius, prepared before he left 
Waldshut, was now for the first time published, as was 
also his " Twelve Articles of the Christian Faith," writ- 
ten while in prison at Zurich. Another writing pub- 
lished at this time was his " Apology or Vindication to 
all Christian Men," being an answer to the slanderous 
charges that were circulated to his disadvantage and to 
the hindrance of the progress of the gospel. He em- 
phatically denies that he speaks contemptuously of the 
mother of Christ and of the saints, that he rejects prayer 
and confession, and that he despises the holy fathers and 
councils. He explains his real attitude in these matters 
in a thoroughly evangelical way. He repudiates the 
charge that he is an Anabaptist. The only true baptism 



180 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

is the baptism of believers, which he holds should be 
administered once for all. He can prove by thousands 
of witnesses that he has always taught obedience to the 
civil magistracy as instituted by God and entrusted by 
him with the disciplinary sword. The work is largely 
autobiographical and is of great value. Before the close 
of 1526 Hubmaier published two other writings, "A 
Short Pater Noster," or exposition of the Lord's Prayer, 
and " A Simple Exposition of the Word : ' This is My 
Body,' in Christ's Supper." In his dedication of this 
latter work to Leonard of Lichtenstein he comments in 
a highly complimentary manner on the composition of his 
name. Leonard expresses strength, truth, and stead- 
fastness (leo — lion), so that even the grim lion of this 
world cannot frighten him ; Lichtenstein says that light 
is come into the world which the good love and the evil 
hate. Ths word stein (stone) in the name is that stone 
upon which the wise man in the Bible built his house. 
He knows no place on earth where the light of the gos- 
pel is shining forth with such brightness as in the 
Lichtensteins' domains, where Spitalmaier and Glaidt 
are placing it on the candlestick. 

During 1527 he published somewhat elaborate forms 
for baptism and the Supper, two works on " The Free- 
dom of the Will," a work on " Brotherly Correction," 
a work on " Christian Exclusion " (excommunication of 
unworthy members), a catechetical work " including 
what every man should know before he is baptized in 
the water," and a work on " The Sword." 

Hubmaier's form of baptism is satisfactory to Baptists 
in nearly every particular except that it does not require 
immersion as the act. His practice in relation to baptism 
was to have the candidate kneel and to pour water upon 
him. This practice was invariably followed, so far as 
we are informed, by the Moravian Anti-pedobaptists and 



FREE WILL AND MAGISTRACY l8l 

by the entire Austrian brotherhood. This form is defi- 
nitely prescribed in Peter Reidemann's " Account of our 
Religion," which from about 1547 onward was recognized 
by his brethren as an almost authoritative work. Yet 
Hubmaier frequently used the expression "baptizing in 
the water." 

As regards the will, he held with Peter Chelcicky and 
with the old-evangelical party in general, as well as with 
the entire Anti-pedobaptist brotherhood, the anti-Augus- 
tinian view, practically equivalent to that which has be- 
come so widely prevalent in modern evangelical Armin- 
ianism. His very able discussion, which it would re- 
quire too much space to summarize, may be set forth in 
the following sentences from another of his works : 
" Man has lost his freedom through sin and has received 
it again through the sacrificial death of Christ. He who 
sins is unfree, until Christ destroys the power of flesh 
and sin, death, devil, and hell. To this end unceasing 
prayer is necessary." 

It is needless to say that Hubmaier laid the utmost 
stress on fraternal correction and upon the exclusion of 
unworthy members : 

After the people have received the word of God and through 
water baptism in the presence of the church have put themselves 
under obligation to God to live according to the word, and if they 
are ready to walk in newness of life and henceforth not to let sin 
reign in the mortal body, they still have need of medicine, because 
men are by nature children of wrath, evil and incapable, whereby 
the foul and stinking flesh together with the poisoned members may 
be somehow cut off, in order that the whole body may not be dis- 
honored and corrupted. 

The very essence of Hubmaier's position lay in the 
requirement of the strictest application of discipline 
according to the precepts of Christ and his apostles. He 
regarded the preaching of the gospel, baptism, and the 



1 82 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Supper as vain and useless apart from discipline, and sin, 
shame, and abomination as the inevitable consequence 
of its neglect. 

In his treatise on the sword he puts himself at vari- 
ance with the old-evangelical brotherhood and with the 
great majority of his Anti-pedobaptist contemporaries. 
His judgment is based upon a very full and careful exam- 
ination of the Scriptures and is in entire accord with that 
of modern Baptists. He defends magistracy as a Chris- 
tian institution and vindicates for Christians the right to 
exercise magistracy and to bear the sword. He discusses 
the fifteen proof-texts that his brethren of the mediaeval 
time and his Anti-pedobaptist contemporaries were in the 
habit of urging against magistracy, attempting to show 
that fidelity to Scripture does not necessitate the conclu- 
sion reached, and caps his argument with the passage : 
" Let every man be subject to the higher powers," etc. 
"This Scripture alone, dear brethren, is itself sufficient 
confirmation of magistracy against all the gates of hell." 

He maintains that Paul's injunction is with reference 
to magistracy in general, whether it be believing or un- 
believing, God has not ordained magistracy against him- 
self. If magistrates seek to punish the evil and summon 
Christian subjects to their aid, they are bound by the 
salvation of their souls to render the needed help : 

Subjects, however, are to prove well beforehand the spirits of 
their magistracies whether they are not moved more by vanity, 
pride, passion, animosity, hatred, and avarice, than by love for the 
common utility and the peace of the land : for this is not to bear the 
sword of God according to the ordinance. But if thou knowest 
that the magistracy punishes the evil solely in order that the pious 
may come to rest and remain unharmed, then help, then counsel, 
then assist, as often as it is required of thee. But if a magistracy 
should be childish or foolish, yea, wholly unfit to rule, it may be 
with propriety abolished and another chosen that is good, since on 
account of an evil magistracy God has often punished a whole 



HUBMAIER OPPOSED TO COMMUNISM 183 

country. But if this cannot be done conveniently and with peace, 
also without great injuries and revolution, then it may be endured. 

In conclusion he makes an earnest appeal to his breth- 
ren to which few in that generation were ready to re- 
spond : 

Therefore in fidelity I advise you, brethren, turn, prove yourselves. 
You have struggled hard and done much that was ill-advised 
against God and brotherly love under an appearance and a pretext 
of humility. Were Christian magistrates and subjects seen to 
hold together in a manly, brotherly, and Christian way, many a 
tyrant would desist from his oppression and compulsion against God 
and all that is proper and would sheath his sword. Even if there 
were no Scripture, yet our own conscience tells us that we should 
help .the magistracy. 

Hubmaier correctly discerned that one of the greatest 
obstacles to the progress of New Testament Christianity 
in his time was the rejection of magistracy, which caused 
Anti-pedobaptists everywhere to be looked upon as ene- 
mies of civil government and their presence as a menace 
to law and order. He made a strong but ineffective 
effort to remove this barrier. 

Equally at variance with the great majority of his 
brethren was Hubmaier in relation to the doctrine of 
property. The preponderating sentiment of the Anti- 
pedobaptists was in favor of community of goods. The 
example of the early Christians in Jerusalem, who sold 
their goods and laid the proceeds at the apostles' feet, 
calling nothing their own, was thought by them to be in 
entire accord with the spirit of Christianity, and any- 
thing short of this absolute renunciation of private own- 
ership, to savor of selfishness and worldliness. Hub- 
maier and many of the early Swiss Anti-pedobaptists 
maintained that while the spirit of Christ requires the 
utmost liberality on the part of believers in succoring 
needy believers and in carrying forward the work of 



184 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Christ, it does not require the relinquishment of private 
ownership. 

The prosperous and promising cause at Nikolsburg was 
not to be permitted long to enjoy the peace and unity 
that the favorable external circumstances and the wise 
and considerate leadership of Hubmaier would seem to 
have promised. Hans Hut, whose career has been 
already sketched, appeared at Nikolsburg before the 
close of 1526, and here, as everywhere, soon made his 
influence profoundly felt. Not only did Hubmaier 
strongly object to his fanatical teaching with reference 
to the speedy setting up of a carnal kingdom of Christ, 
but the views of the two men came into the sharpest 
collision regarding magistracy. Hut, as we have seen, 
was one of the most radical opponents of magistracy as 
a permanent divine institution. While he believed that 
the time would soon come when under Divine direction 
believers would be called upon to take up the sword for 
the slaughter of the ungodly, and especially of the ruling 
classes, he denied the right of Christians to engage 
directly or indirectly in carnal warfare under the leader- 
ship of secular princes. A considerable proportion of 
those who had adopted Anti-pedobaptist views under 
Hubmaier's influence, including Oswald Glaidt and sev- 
eral other ministers, were carried away by Hut's en- 
thusiasm. Even Goschel seems to have taken sides 
with Hut against Hubmaier. Two disputations failed to 
secure the desired unity, and Hut's teaching and conduct 
were regarded by Lichtenstein as so revolutionary in 
their nature as to warrant his exclusion from the com- 
munity. We need not suppose that all who sided with 
Hut in this controversy accepted his more fanatical 
views. The chief points at issue were, as we have 
seen, magistracy and warfare, and on these points Hut 
was in accord with old-evangelical tradition and with the 



HUBMAIER'S EXTRADITION DEMANDED 185 

views of the great majority of contemporary Anti-pedo- 
baptists, while Hubmaier was in the position of an inno- 
vator in these matters. 

Before Hut's arrival a considerable party had appeared, 
represented by Jacob Wiedemann, Jager, Schlegel, and 
Burkhardt, who not only denied that Christians could 
personally engage in warfare, but who insisted that it 
was just as little allowable to pay taxes for the support 
of warfare. Such taxes they stigmatized as " blood- 
moiiey." These, of course, arrayed themselves on 
Hut's side in the controversy with Hubmaier. 

Jacob Wiedemann (commonly called by his brethren 
" One-eyed Jacob ") had come from the land of the Enns 
(Salzburg), and before the close of 1527 had begun 
to agitate most persistently in favor of community of 
goods. Spitalmaier, one of the Nikolsburg evangelical 
ministers who had been won to the support of Hub- 
maier's cause, continued faithful to the moderate princi- 
ples of Hubmaier, and as pastor or chaplain of the Lich- 
tensteins, contended zealously against Wiedemann and 
his party. 

In the summer of 1527 the Austrian Government 
began to take cognizance of the Anti-pedobaptist move- 
ment that was rapidly spreading over Southern Moravia. 
The widely circulated writings of Hubmaier brought the 
movement into great prominence. Attention was called 
to the fact that the same Hubmaier who had been the 
cause of so much trouble at Waldshut, and whom the 
Austrian authorities had vainly endeavored to get within 
their power, was, with the full protection and support of 
an Austrian subject, bringing multitudes of people to the 
adoption of his heresies. 

We need not dwell upon the steps by which the Lich- 
tensteins felt themselves compelled to deliver their 
spiritual father into the hands of his enemies. Ferdi- 



186 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

nand was all the more desirous to put an end to the 
activity of Hubmaier from the fact that accounts were 
about this time continually coming to him of the growth 
and aggressiveness of the Anti-pedobaptist movement in 
Upper and in Lower Austria. 

Hans Hut had been preaching publicly in Steyer, and 
his activity since leaving Nikolsburg had been unceasing 
and effective. So strong a foothold had the movement 
secured in the Salzburg region that the local officers 
assured the government of the necessity of proceeding 
with the utmost caution in efforts to suppress it. A 
number of people of consideration were involved and 
riot might follow an effort to punish them. In Lower 
Austria too, largely as a result of Hubmaier's influence, 
Anabaptist communities were appearing in many places. 

The demand for Hubmaier's extradition seems to have 
been based on his supposed treasonable attitude toward 
the government during his Waldshut career. Whether 
the Lichtensteins could have protected him for any con- 
siderable time against the demands of the government it 
is not easy to determine. That they yielded with un- 
seemly readiness is a conclusion that can scarcely be 
avoided. 

In July, 1527, a little over a year after his arrival at 
Nikolsburg, he was seized, along with his devoted wife, 
by the Austrian authorities. 

While Hubmaier was in prison at Greitzenstein, his 
old friend, Dr. Johann Faber, spent several days discuss- 
ing with him in a friendly way the points at issue and 
seeking to win him back to the communion of the church. 
Hubmaier prepared on this occasion an elaborate confes- 
sion, in which he stated his position in the most concili- 
atory manner that his conscience would allow ; but he 
was too radically at variance with Roman Catholicism to 
satisfy his persecutors. 



HUBMAIER'S MARTYRDOM 187 

After a long imprisonment, he was burned at the stake 
on March 10, 1528. Three days later, his wife was 
drowned in the Danube and her body burned. Goschel, 
Hubmaier's distinguished colleague, was seized at about 
the time of Hubmaier's death. At Prague he was seven 
times subjected to the most excruciating tortures, and 
finally induced to recant. In consideration of the fact 
that he had been a Catholic bishop and of the interces- 
sion of some of the Moravian nobles he escaped the stake 
to die in prison shortly afterward of the hardships he had 
suffered. 

Thus the Moravian Anti-pedobaptists were deprived of 
their greatest leader and the cause of radical evangelical 
reform of its ablest and soundest advocate. In point of 
ability and character Hubmaier deserves a high place 
among the evangelical leaders of the church universal. 

Literature: Hubmaier's writings, and the pertinent works of 
Loserth, Hosek, Schreiber, Veesenmeyer, Wolny, Cornelius, Stern, 
Faber (Fabri), Kessler, Hagen, and Beck (Geschichtsbucher) as in 
the Bibliography. 



CHAPTER XV 
THE TYROL 

THE Tyrol was happily designated by one of the em- 
perors "the eye and the shield of Austria." No 
portion of Europe was more likely to be strongly in- 
fluenced by the Anti-pedobaptist movement, and in few 
did it meet with a heartier reception or strike deeper its 
roots. The Tyrol is essentially a series of valleys, and 
at that time the mountain regions were covered with 
dense forests. Even in times of direst persecution Anti- 
pedobaptist teachers trained, like the Waldenses of the 
earlier time, in all the arts of evading their persecutors, 
were able to carry forward effective work. They were 
familiar with all the secret refuges and byways used by 
the persecuted people, and some of the leaders who had 
been singled out for destruction by the authorities were 
able for years to elude the vigilance of the police, who 
had every inducement to seize them. 

One of the principal passes of the Alps was in the 
Tyrol. The Waldenses, whose principal centers during 
the thirteenth and following centuries were Lombardy 
and the western Austrian provinces, were continually 
passing through this region, and had many congregations 
within its bounds. Its contiguity to Switzerland and 
Southern Germany made it inevitable that Anti-pedo- 
baptists fleeing from persecution or impelled by mission- 
ary zeal should make known to the Tyrolese what they 
considered the pure gospel. 

Lutheranism had secured a considerable following at 
an early period, Urban Rhegius, the noted Augsburg 
evangelical leader, having for some time (1522-23) 
188 



EARLY EVANGELICAL TEACHING 189 

labored zealously for reform at Hall. The authorities 
were soon able to suppress all public evangelical teach- 
ing ; but the people, whose religious sensibilities had been 
quickened by what they had learned of the gospel, gave 
a hearty reception to such evangelical preachers as were 
willing to risk their lives to make known the truth. 

As early as 1525-26 there was at least one Anti-pedo- 
baptist congregation in the Inn Valley. Hans Hut related 
that a certain Caspar from the Inn Valley told him (May, 
1526) of some brethren who had been baptized there, 
and induced him to seek baptism at the hands of Denck, 
at Augsburg. The origin of this community is unknown. 
Its most distinguished member was Pilgram Marbeck 
who, in 1525, had been appointed by the Austrian au- 
thorities magistrate for miners, and of whose career as 
a loyal Anti-pedobaptist and as a civil engineer at Stras- 
burg we shall hereafter learn. 

In 1527, according to contemporary documents, these 
native Anti-pedobaptists were largely reinforced by 
refugees from Switzerland, Bavaria, Salzburg, and Car- 
niola. It is said that "the teachers and ministers of the 
word" came down on both sides of the Brenner, trav- 
ersed the land in all directions, and frequented the huts 
of the peasants, the houses of the citizens, and the 
castles of the nobles. 

The cowherd Wolfgang, of the Sarn Valley, is said to 
have been " a messenger of Anabaptism." The 
esquires at Clausen had urged him by no means to be 
deterred from the preaching of the gospel, and a majority 
of them had attended his services. The warden of 
Guffidaun had sent for him, and there he had preached 
four times in private houses. If he had desired to preach 
in a church he might have done so. In Bozen, Taufers, 
and other places, he had enjoyed the favor of people of 
high social standing, including some priests. During the 



190 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

early part of 1527 the government received information 
of the existence of Anti-pedobaptists in Rattenberg, 
Glurns, and Mais. In May a mandate was issued for 
the imprisonment of all persons of high or low estate, 
native or foreign, spiritual or secular, who should impugn 
the sacraments of the church. 

The most notable persons affected by the mandate 
were Anton von Wolkenstein and Helena von Freiberg. 
The former, whose house was said to be "an asylum of 
sectaries," was arraigned before the authorities, but 
was discharged on his promise to cease to have anything 
to do with the sectaries and their books. Far more 
loyal to the persecuted Anti-pedobaptists was Helena von 
Freiberg. She endured much loss and suffering on be- 
half of the cause that was very dear to her, but finally 
felt herself obliged to renounce her views (1534). 

The first to suffer martyrdom in the Anti-pedobaptist 
cause in the Tyrol was Leonard Schiemer, who is spoken 
of as the "first Anabaptist bishop" in upper Austria. A 
full record of the trial has been preserved. A number 
of writings produced during his somewhat extended im- 
prisonment are also extant. He was evidently a man of 
high culture and of remarkable force of character. A 
Bavarian by birth, his earlier years of service in the Anti- 
pedobaptist cause seem to have been devoted to his native 
land. His labors in the Tyrol had been of short dura- 
tion, but singularly fruitful. The fields were evidently 
white unto the harvest, and any zealous preacher of the 
gospel could reap abundantly. Schiemer could not be 
induced to compromise his position in the slightest de- 
gree. He expressed his regret that he had not accom- 
plished more than he had been permitted to do in the 
good cause. He was condemned to the stake, but was 
mercifully executed by the sword and his body burned, 
January 14, 1528. 



SIXTEEN HUNDRED MARTYRS 191 

When we remember that by 1531 one thousand Anti- 
pedobaptists had suffered martyrdom in the Tyrol and in 
Gortz, and six hundred at Ennisheim, we need not to be 
informed either of the great vigor with which their work 
was carried forward or of the terrible zeal with which the 
government pursued them. In almost every community 
a large proportion of those who were arraigned were in- 
duced so far to deny their faith as to secure release, and 
many escaped the vigilance of the authorities. Probably 
thousands of these dissenters from the Tyrol and Austrian 
provinces made their way to Moravia, and most of the 
leaders had their training among the Moravians. 

To go into the details of the persecution is manifestly 
impracticable. To describe the work in its various local- 
ities would be to deal with the entire land ; for probably 
no locality escaped the influence of the evangelism that 
was carried on with marvelous energy and success. 

The Inn and the Danube furnished the means of com- 
munication between the upper Austrian provinces and 
Moravia. While boatmen trafficking on these streams 
were strictly enjoined by the government not to furnish 
transportation to heretics, and to assist the authorities in 
arresting them, and while a large special police force was 
appointed to prevent the intercourse that was known to 
exist between the Tyrol and Moravia, little was accom- 
plished in this direction. Many were arrested, but their 
places were speedily taken by others who counted not 
their lives dear unto them. 

It seems certain that a considerable number of the 
officials whose business it was to arrest and convict Anti- 
pedobaptists were themselves strongly in sympathy with 
the persecuted people. Some of them were suspected 
by the government and were punished. That many of 
them were faithful to the government the vast number 
arrested, convicted, and executed bears ample witness. 



192 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Among the first of the congregations to be taken in 
hand by the authorities were those of Freundsberg, Rat- 
tenberg, and Kitzbiichl. The prison of the first of these 
places was soon so overcrowded that that of Schwaz had 
to be called into requisition. Kitzbiichl was the chief 
resort of the Salzburg fugitives. The arrest of a certain 
local ex-priest, who called himself Paul, and around 
whom a large number of persons had gathered, was a 
special object of desire on the part of the authorities. 
For favoring and protecting him Helena von Freiberg in- 
curred a deepening of the suspicion in which she was 
held. 

The next prominent leader to be seized, tried, and exe- 
cuted was Hans Schlatter, who had been in Moravia and 
Southern Germany, and who numbered among his 
friends and acquaintances such men as Wiedemann, 
Kautz, Hut, Hetzer, and Denck. He bewailed the sins 
that he had committed as a priest, and gloried in the work 
that he and his brethren had been permitted to do by 
way of restoring the pure gospel. He thought it just as 
unreasonable to put straw into the fire and forbid it to 
burn as to expect anything but corruption from the 
priests under existing conditions. 

In 1528 a little book was discovered in circulation in 
which "Anabaptism was painted for those who could not 
read." 

Ferdinand was continually writing to the local officials 
where heresy had been detected and urging them to use 
their utmost diligence in executing his mandates. Large 
numbers were put to death ; many more were compelled 
by tortures and hardships to deny the faith. It was 
found that a large proportion of those, who under stress 
of torture were induced to promise to abandon the Anti- 
pedobaptist way, relapsed soon after their release. 

In April, 1528, a special ordinance was enacted for the 



INCREASING SEVERITY I93 

burning or demolition of houses that had been used for 
dissenting services, and many such were destroyed. 
The carrying out of this ordinance affected disadvanta- 
geous^ many of the faithful whose houses had been thus 
used without their consent, and who bitterly complained 
of the loss inflicted. A further mandate prohibited the 
entertainment of these so-called heretics by innkeepers, 
etc. 

Persecution having broken out in Moravia during this 
year, a considerable number of Tyrolese brethren re- 
turned to their homes and thus added to the perplexity 
of the authorities, who saw the numbers of the heretics 
rapidly increasing in the face of the rigorous execution of 
the royal mandates. One of the greatest difficulties with 
which Ferdinand had to contend was the extreme reluc- 
tance of local magistrates and jurors to press the persecu- 
tion to extremes. Especially was this the case at Guffi- 
daun and Sterzing. At Kitzbiichl large numbers were 
put to death and one hundred and six renounced Ana- 
baptism. 

Georg Zaunring, who at an earlier date was the 
associate of Reublin in his contest with Jacob Wiede- 
mann, baptized multitudes in the summer of 1528. One 
of his disciples named Kirschner took up the work and 
preached throughout an extended region. He had bap- 
tized over a hundred when he was seized at Kitzbiichl, in 
April, 1529, and summarily executed. 

A mandate of February, 1529, renews the provisions 
of the earlier mandates and complains that some magis- 
trates are pronouncing judgment not according to the 
royal mandates, but according to their own opinions. 
Such conduct is strictly prohibited as being against their 
vows and oaths in accepting office. It is ordered that 
henceforth all Anabaptist processes be held in the cities 
and seats of justice, in order that the laxity likely to 

N 



194 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

prevail in less responsible courts may be avoided. The 
imperial edict of Speier, which was promulgated at this 
time, sharpened the procedures in the Tyrol. Fifty 
mounted patrolmen and three inquisitors were employed 
to hunt out the noxious sectaries throughout the country. 

Sterzing, Hall, and Kitzbiichl were at this time the 
principal centers of the movement. Among its adherents 
were citizens, peasants, and gentry. The prisons were 
perpetually filled to overflowing. Large numbers of 
orphaned children had to be cared for at the public 
expense. Spies were employed to insinuate themselves 
into their confidence by pretended conversion to their 
views and thus to ascertain their secret meeting places, 
the names and abodes of their leaders, etc. 

At Brixen the priest Benedict denounced the butchery 
of the pious people and soon afterward identified himself 
with them. The jurors at Bozen protested against the 
bloodshed in which they were required to involve them- 
selves, and especially against the sending to Bozen for 
trial of persons from outside their special jurisdiction. 

In the Michaelsburg district persecution raged more 
fiercely than elsewhere. Here we first meet with Jacob 
Huter as an Anabaptist worker. Born in the Puster 
Valley, he received a fair education at the Bruneck 
school. He then went to Prague to learn the hatter's 
trade (whence his name). It is probable that there, if 
not earlier, he came under the influence of the old-evan- 
gelical teaching. As a journeyman hatter he visited 
many places, and finally took up his abode at Spital in 
Carniola. There seems to be no foundation whatever 
for the report of Meschovius, followed by some later 
writers, that Huter was a disciple of Nicholas Storch, 
and that he was a leader along with Gabriel Scharding 
of the great Anti-pedobaptist movement in Silesia. There 
is no evidence that he had ever visited Silesia. Just 



JACOB HUTER I95 

when and where he united with the brotherhood is un- 
known. His first labors seem to have been in the Puster 
Valiey in the latter part of 1528 or early in 1529. When 
one of his meetings was raided in May, 1529, fourteen of 
those present were seized, but Huter along with some 
others escaped. The severity of persecution increasing, 
Huter was sent by his brethren to Moravia to consult 
with the brethren there as to fellowship and refuge for 
the persecuted. Returning to the Tyrol fully satisfied 
as regards the desirableness of emigration to Moravia he 
sent thither under the guidance of Georg Zaunring one 
company of people after another, with all their movable 
means, to enter into fellowship with Wiedemann's party. 

During his absence in Moravia, Georg Blaurock, with 
the quality of whose Christian character and work we 
are already familiar, came to the Tyrol in company with 
Hans Langecker, a weaver. No evangelical preacher 
had awakened in the Tyrol anything like the widespread 
popular interest aroused by "Strong Georg." We find 
him laboring at Glurns, Schlaunders, Klausen, Guffi- 
daun, and in many other localities. He moved rapidly 
from place to place, and thus for some months was able 
to escape the police. He labored as a man who realized 
that his time on earth was short, and the people every- 
where thronged his ministry. On August 14, along 
with Langecker, he was arrested and thrown into the 
Guffidaun prison. The two were burned alive on Sep- 
tember 6, 1529. 

The stress of persecution in the Tyrol drove a consid- 
erable number into the diocese of Trent, and the Vene- 
tian authorities were warned that some seemed to be 
making their way thither. It is highly probable that 
they succeeded, for a few years later the Venetian terri- 
tory abounded in Anti-pedobaptists. Yet they continued 
to maintain themselves with unabated zeal in all the 



196 A HISTORY OF ANT1-PEDOBAPTISM 

principal Tyrolese centers. The king continued to press 
on the persecution with the utmost vigor, and complaints 
are frequent of the remissness of officials, who are in 
some cases accused of favoring the heretics. 

The practice of examining them publicly and disputing 
with them was found to encourage rather than deter 
from heresy, and its discontinuance was ordered. Per- 
secution itself had no terrors for the zealous people. 
The Tyrolese officials reminded the king that " in two 
years scarcely a day has passed in which they have not 
dealt with Anabaptist matters, and more than seven 
hundred men and women in this earldom (Tyrol), in 
many different places, have been condemned to death, 
others have been driven from the land, still more have 
miserably fled, leaving their goods, and in some cases 
their children as orphans." They advise the king to 
send a special injunction to the upper and official classes 
all over the land to see to it that those who are charged 
with bringing heretics to justice do their duty. They 
complain of the 

madness that is now commonly found among the people, that they 
are not only not terrified by the punishment of others, but they go, 
where they are at liberty to do so or desire to go, themselves to the 
imprisoned and show themselves as their brethren and sisters, and 
when the magistrates waylay and surprise them, they confess 
readily and willingly without torture, will listen to no instruction, 
and rarely can one of them be converted from their unbelief, their 
only desire for the most part being to die speedily. And if indeed 
one recants, not much confidence is to be put in him ; so that neither 
good teaching nor severe punishment will help among the peopie. 
We hope your royal majesty will, from these our true accounts, 
graciously understand that we have in no respect allowed our in- 
dustry to flag. 

It was exceedingly mortifying to Ferdinand to find his 
persistent and earnest efforts for the suppression of the 
Anti-pedobaptists so futile, and he probably derived little 



PERSECUTION AND FAILURE 197 

satisfaction from the assurance that the Tyrolese authori- 
ties had done their very best to carry out his wishes. In 
fact he could not be persuaded that his mandates had 
been energetically executed, and continued to sharpen 
his requirements and to look carefully after their execu- 
tion. July 1, 1530, he issued further directions for the 
detection of Anti-pedobaptists, and offered a reward of 
thirty to forty florins to any one who would detect a 
brother and secure his arrest. 

In the meantime Jacob Huter was laboring with unre- 
mitting zeal.. From valley to valley throughout the 
Tyrol he went, encouraging the persecuted brethren, and 
where it was impossible for them to remain in their 
homes without great danger, arranging for their emigra- 
tion to Moravia. His continued activity, notwithstand- 
ing the extreme anxiety of the authorities to get posses- 
sion of his person, was possible by reason of his own 
rare skill in avoiding the officers of the law and the fidel- 
ity of his brethren, who could be induced by no tortures 
to betray him. Of Huter's successful efforts to heal 
the divisions that had arisen among the brethren in 
Moravia we shall hereafter become aware. 

The persecution did not reach its height until 1532— 
33. We have some interesting indications of the meet- 
ing places of the brethren during these troublous times. 
At Rattenberg they met in a colliery ; at Schwaz in an 
abandoned gallery of a mine ; in Klausen, Huter held 
an assembly of one hundred and fifty in a pit and admin- 
istered the Supper. At Albeins and at Prugg meetings 
of fifty to sixty were held in the smelting works. 

On February 6 a mandate was issued prohibiting the 
housing or harboring of Anabaptists, who are declared to 
be "more noxious than murderers, and enemies of the 
land, whom every one should be willing to throw down 
and take prisoners." A few weeks later a fresh mandate 



198 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

was issued reminding all the people of the earlier ones 
and bewailing the fact that " in spite of all precautions 
it (the Anabaptists' sect) will have no cessation, but still 
propagates itself in many places." 

A fresh mandate against those who harbor Anabaptists 
was issued April 24. These mandates proving inadequate 
for the immediate extermination of the party, a far more 
sanguinary one was issued on May 12. It is provided, 
among other things, that those who house, harbor, or in 
any way render assistance to Anabaptists shall be 
arrested and questioned under torture as to their rela- 
tions to the Anabaptists ; and even if their connection 
with the sect cannot be established, they shall neverthe- 
less be punished in body and goods. 

One of the chief sources of vexation to Ferdinand was 
the failure of the heretic hunters to seize the leaders, 
especially Huter, Hans Tuchmacher, Hans Amon, and 
Onofrius, who were known to be holding meetings here 
and there, but who long eluded their pursuers. 

In June, 1533, Ferdinand offered a reward of sixty, 
seventy, or one hundred florins (according to circum- 
stances) for the apprehension of any one of the Anabap- 
tist ministers, and ordered that a number of men be 
secretly appointed to seek admission by baptism into the 
Anabaptist fellowship, learn all they could about their 
leaders, methods, meeting places, etc., and betray them 
to the authorities. Meanwhile the prisons were full, 
and torture, butchery, and burning went on with ever- 
increasing vigor. 

In May, 1533, the government directed the warden at 
Guffidaun to pour some consecrated water into the drink 
of the obstinate prisoners and to cook their food with 
consecrated salt ; to do this for some days and to see 
what would come of it. 

Huter retired to Moravia for a season, in August, 1533, 



THE WOLKENSTEINS 199 

having already sent multitudes of his brethren to this 
land of promise. His promotion to the head pastorship 
of the party that came to bear his name soon followed. 

The trial of Anton von Wolkenstein and his family, 
identified with the Anti-pedobaptist cause since 1527, did 
not occur till 1534. With his wife and several other 
members of his household he was cast into prison, and 
every effort was made to induce them to recant. Both 
husband and wife persisted for some time in their refusal. 
It looked as if Lady Wolkenstein would persevere to the 
end and wear the martyr's crown. Anton yielded first, 
and through the importunity of her children, whose pros- 
pects in life would be utterly blighted by her execution 
for heresy, she was finally induced to sign a form of 
recantation. Young Sigismund von Wolkenstein with 
great difficulty emerged from the inquisition through the 
influence of friends and his agreement to enter the army. 

Persecution having broken out violently in Moravia, 
many Tyrolese Anti-pedobaptists returned to their native 
land, among them Huter himself. Soon after his arrival, 
he wrote to brethren left behind an account of his work 
and its prospects. He is not able to advise or discourage 
the return of other brethren. Each must take the re- 
sponsibility for himself. " The Lord has abundantly 
prospered our way, and has brought us safely to the 
Puster valley and the Etsch land." He is already at 
work in mountain and valley, visiting those who are 
hungering and thirsting after the truth. " But the god- 
less tyrants and the enemies of the truth, who have the 
power to slay, do not yet know, as we suppose, of our 
being here. God from heaven grant that they may be 
blinded and may not for a long time be made aware of 
our presence." This letter unfortunately fell into the 
hands of the authorities, and the hunt for its author was 
renewed with intensified zeal. 



200 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

The authorities used the utmost diligence in seizing 
the fugitives from Moravia, and many fell into their 
hands. From April to July, 1535, Huter's presence in 
the country seems to have been concealed from his ene- 
mies. From this time they were in hot pursuit of him. 
Three letters written to his brethren in Moravia shortly 
before his death are full of foreboding as to the future, 
but also breathe the spirit of pious resignation. That he 
should write with some degree of bitterness of those who 
had destroyed so many of his brethren and like "cruel 
hell-hounds" were seeking his own life was no more 
than might have been expected. He says : 

The godless, Sodomitic sea roars and rages. I fear indeed that there 
will be no rest until the pious Jonas is cast in and the cruel whale 
has swallowed him. The whale is the cruel tyrant and enemy of the 
truth, Ferdinand, with all his following, and the accursed pope, with 
his accursed hell-hounds. But God will command this sea and his 
own shall be delivered from the power of godless men. Dearly be- 
loved brethren, we now expect daily, hourly, momentarily the catch- 
poles of the magistrate, and the servants of the executioner, and all 
tribulation. . . The Lord grant us power and strength to abide in 
his truth. 

He was seized about November 19, 1535, and after 
suffering unspeakable tortures, was burned at the stake. 
His bearing throughout the whole process, like his life, 
was most heroic. 

The Anti-pedobaptist cause, it is needless to say, suf- 
fered irreparable loss in the death of its ablest leader. 
Hans Amon, now at the head of Huterite Church in 
Moravia, sent Hieronymus Kals, an educated school- 
master, with two companions, to encourage the sorely 
persecuted brethren in the Tyrol, January, 1636 ; but 
they were seized on their way at Vienna and there exe- 
cuted. Leonard Seiler was next sent, but he also was 
thrown into prison at Moding, where he lay for nearly a 



AMON AND GRIESINGER 201 

year. To attempt to enter upon evangelical work in the 
Tyrol or in any part of Austria at this time was most 
hazardous and required heroism of the highest order ; but 
there was no lack of men who were willing to enter the 
breaches as they occurred. 

Huter's successor in the Tyrolese work proved to be 
Onophrius Griesinger. For nearly two years he was 
able to elude the vigilance of the authorities and to carry 
forward the work in Huter's own spirit. He possessed 
courage amounting almost to audacity, but combined 
with this a rare skill in concealing his movements from 
the police acquired by years of experience as an evan- 
gelist in the Tyrolese valleys. A Bavarian by birth he 
had held an honorable civil position in Salzburg. Since 
his conversion (1532) his labors had been chiefly in the 
Tyrol. Arrested in April, 1536, he had effected an 
escape. The authorities offered one hundred florins for 
his apprehension, but this was not accomplished until 
August 26, 1538. 

Associated with Griesinger were a considerable number 
of zealous evangelists who did not suffer the good work 
to languish. We still hear of large assemblies of the 
persecuted people in many places. The vigor of the 
work carried on at this time as well as later was due to 
the well-directed efforts of the Moravian brethren, a 
large proportion of whose members knew from experi- 
ence what it was to attempt to follow Scripture and con- 
science in the Tyrol. 

The zeal of Ferdinand and his advisers was unabated 
and vast numbers continued to suffer for their faith. 
Side by side with these persistent efforts for the exter- 
mination of heresy was a recognition of the corruptions 
of monastic and clerical life and a somewhat vigorous 
effort by bringing about needed reforms to remove one of 
the chief grounds for evangelical dissent. 



202 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

From 1539 to 1548, although their ranks had been 
considerably thinned by persecution and emigration, 
the Anti-pedobaptist cause was energetically maintained 
largely through the encouragement of the Moravians. 
While persecution continued we see signs of relaxation. 
Executions became less summary, and more earnest 
efforts than heretofore were made to win the heretics, 
now recognized as deluded rather than malignant, from 
their errors. Ferdinand did not see his way to follow the 
recommendation of the Innsbruck government (Septem- 
ber, 1529) that Anabaptists who persisted in their errors 
should be given a limited time within which to dispose of 
their property and leave the land, but he did not repel 
the suggestion with such decision as he would probably 
have done at an earlier time. 

The ecclesiastical authorities at Brixen complained to 
the king (November 10, 1539) of the great expense in- 
volved in the attempt to exterminate the Anabaptists and 
the ineffectiveness of persecution. While within a few 
years more than six hundred have been executed, the 
sect has been thereby from day to day more and more 
enkindled and raised up. Attention is further called to 
the fact that many of those who have been appointed to 
try and condemn heretics have conscientious scruples 
against condemning the Anabaptists to death. While 
every effort is being made by them (the Brixen author- 
ities) to enforce the royal mandates, they ask Ferdinand 
to take into consideration the addition of a provision for 
the sale of goods and removal from the land of such as 
persist in their errors. Evidently the Tyrolese people 
were growing weary of bloodshed. 

Ferdinand renewed the earlier mandates a few weeks 
later and insisted on their rigorous enforcement. Yet by 
1543 even Ferdinand relented and did not hesitate to de- 
clare that he had " a horror " of this continual slaugh- 



LANZENSTIEL AND LOCHMAYER 203 

ter and complained of the rigorous execution of the 
imperial and princely mandates against the poor and mis- 
guided people. The utmost importance continued to be 
attached to the apprehension of the leaders. 

The most prominent leader during this time was 
Leonard Lanzenstiel (or Seiler), a Bavarian, who had 
spent some time in Bohemia and Moravia. He was nom- 
inated by Hans Amon as his successor in the leadership 
of the Huterite connection in 1542, and died at the stake 
in Salzburg during the same year. Closely associated with 
Lanzenstiel in Tyrolese work was Leonard Lochmayer, 
an ex-priest from Freisingen, converted to Anti-pedobap- 
tism in 1527. He removed to Moravia in 1528 and be- 
came one of the most zealous and successful of evan- 
gelists. His field embraced Hungary and several parts of 
Austria. In the Tyrol he was considered by his oppo- 
nents more dangerous than Huter. He suffered for his 
faith in 1538. 

There is no more striking proof of relaxation in the 
execution of the mandates against the Anti-pedobaptists 
than is to be found in the career of Hans Mandl (1537— 
61). A native of the Tyrol, he was baptized by Gries- 
inger in 1537. Soon afterward he was thrown into 
prison at Sterzing, where he lay for six months. In 1544 
he was imprisoned for twenty-two weeks at Landeck. 
He regarded his deliverance on these two occasions as 
providential. By 1548 he was the chief leader of the 
Tyrolese Anti-pedobaptists and remained such until his 
death in 1561. Soon after he had assumed the leader- 
ship he was again arrested and imprisoned (November, 
1548). He was treated with much kindness and consid- 
eration by a priest commissioned to convince him of his 
errors and managed to escape. After a career of great 
activity and success, — he is said to have himself alone 
baptized about four hundred and as leader exerted a wide- 



204 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

spread influence, — he was seized, condemned, and burned 
in 1561. 

During this period the exodus to Moravia was constant 
and the work in the Tyrol was carried on largely under 
the direction and with the support of the Huterite con- 
nection in that land. 

In the trial of Mandl the government had great diffi- 
culty with the jurors, who were required to swear that 
they would render judgment strictly according to the 
royal mandates and not according to their own con- 
sciences. Much time was consumed in dealing with 
three jurors who declared "that they could not burden 
their consciences with such a case and that they would 
sooner endure therefor any punishment whatever." 
They were thrown into prison. 

The reign of the Emperor Maximilian II. (1564-76), was 
one of comparative toleration. The position of the 
Moravian Anti-pedobaptists was during this period, as we 
shall see, one of great prosperity. After Mandl's exe- 
cution along with two other ministers, the exodus of the 
Tyrolese brethren to Moravia became greater than it had 
been for a number of years ; yet in spite of the diminu- 
tion of numbers the work was carried zealously forward. 

Before the close of the sixteenth century, however, 
the Jesuits had begun to gain an ascendency over the 
Hapsburg rulers, and from this time onward the Anti- 
pedobaptists throughout Austria and its dependencies 
were systematically and persistently persecuted. We 
are familiar with the methods by which they conducted 
their crusade against evangelical religion of every type 
and of the process by which Hussites, Bohemian Breth- 
ren, Anti-pedobaptists, and Protestants, were almost 
utterly exterminated (1618-1648). . 

Literature : Pertinent works of Loserth, Kripp, and Beck, as in 
the Bibliography. 



CHAPTER XVI 
AUSTRIA 

THE term " Austria," sometimes used to designate the 
archduchy of Austria, may be here employed in a 
broader sense so as to embrace Styria, Salzburg, Carni- 
ola, and Carinthia. The Tyrol has demanded a separate 
chapter. 

The diocese of Passau, which embraced territory now 
partly in Bavaria and partly in Upper Austria, was a 
chief center of mediaeval evangelical life. About 1260, 
as has been earlier mentioned, as many as forty distinct 
congregations were located by the authorities in this 
region. Notwithstanding the rigor of the inquisitorial 
processes carried forward" at this time, they persisted in 
large numbers. Many were arraigned in Steyer in 131 1. 
In the region between Traiskirchen and St. Polten resi- 
dent heretics were found about this time in thirty-six 
localities, and one hundred and twenty-nine were burned 
at the stake. Many more recanted and many fled. A 
Waldensian bishop named Neumeister was burned in 131 5, 
who confessed to having eighty thousand adherents in the 
archduchy of Austria alone. He represented the number 
of Waldenses in Bohemia 1 and Moravia as beyond computa- 
tion. These statements seem exaggerated and may have 
been extorted ; but the inquisitors must have believed 
that they were in accord with the facts. 

The city of Steyer and its environs long continued to 
be a stronghold of dissent. The inquisitor Peter, who 
made Steyer his residence from 1395 onward, found mul- 

1 Among the errors attributed to the Bohemian heretics by Pope John XXII., in 
1318, was Anabaptism. 

S 205 



206 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

titudes of Waldenses. A contemporary document places 
the number of suspects at more than one thousand. 
About one hundred were burned in 1397. We have 
abundant evidence of the activity of the Waldenses 
throughout the various provinces of Upper Austria dur- 
ing the early part of the fifteenth century. 

This region formed part of the territory traversed and 
cultivated by the famous Waldensian bishop, Frederick 
Reiser, who was in close touch with the Taborite move- 
ment in Bohemia. A large proportion of the old-evan- 
gelicals of Upper Austria seem to have taken refuge in 
Bohemia and Moravia ; but the inquisition was not en- 
tirely abandoned and occasional heretical processes 
occur. Waldenses were persecuted as witches in many 
parts of Europe during the latter half of the fifteenth 
century, and Waldensianism came to be practically 
synonymous with witchcraft. 

The readiness with which Lutheranism found accept- 
ance in Upper Austria, would seem to show that though 
its outward manifestation had long been suppressed the 
old-evangelical spirit had survived. By 1525 a majority 
of the local diet of Upper Austria had declared in favor 
of reform. Steyer, which had been a chief center of old- 
evangelical life, was also foremost in its enthusiastic 
adoption of Protestantism. The efforts of the Austrian 
government to secure the co-operation of the local au- 
thorities for the suppression of Lutheranism proved in- 
effective up to 1527. The aggressiveness of Anti-pedo- 
baptism had by this time become so marked that special 
attention was now given to this phase of dissent and 
many princes and officials were ready to join hands with 
the king in efforts to extirpate so dangerous a heresy. 

In August, 1527, Ferdinand issued a mandate in which 
he complained that not only was Lutheranism steadily 
increasing in strength, but that " new, fearful, unheard- 



ANTI-PEDOBAPTISTS AT STEYER 207 

of doctrines ... are emerging. Among these the re- 
newal of baptism and the abuse of the highly venerable 
sacrament of Christ's holy body are included." Erro- 
neous teaching with respect to baptism, the mass, and 
extreme unction are to be punished with imprisonment, 
banishment, or in some other way ; but whosoever shall 
have "preached up among the common people the false 
doctrine of Christian freedom, as if all things should be 
in common and there should be no magistracy ... is to 
be capitally punished." 

The Steyer Council complained that the clergy and 
monks will allow no learned man to labor there, " but if 
God should lead such an one here, they would have no 
rest or repose until he should be removed." The accept- 
ance given to Hans Hut's preaching was in their opinion 
due not to any evil purpose but to love for God's word. 
The town clerk, Pruckmtiller, quoted in favor of non-in- 
terference with the Anti-pedobaptists, Gamaliel's words: 
"If this work is of man's hand it will come to naught, 
but if it proceeds from God you cannot suppress it." 

On September 10, 1527, Ferdinand issued full directions 
to the Steyer authorities for dealing with the disciples of 
Hut. They are to be required to abjure and ever after- 
ward keep themselves free from all of Hut's errors, 
regularly attend the services of the church, and submit 
themselves to all its ordinances to the end of their lives, 
to do public penance on three successive feast days in 
a way prescribed, etc. 

It is certain that, apart from the persistence of old-evan- 
gelical modes of thought and the preparation furnished 
by the widespread acceptance of early Lutheranism, 
Anti-pedobaptist life had invaded the Austrian provinces 
as early as 1525-6. The persecutions in Switzerland 
and the bordering States at this time scattered the perse- 
cuted flocks very widely and these regions were at this 



208 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

time among the most inviting. It is probable that Hans 
Hut found considerable numbers of radical evangelicals 
and some pronounced Anti-pedobaptists in most of the 
places that he visited in the memorable summer of 1527. 
We cannot easily account for the readiness with which 
his teachings were everywhere accepted and the rapidity 
with which he was able to organize churches of baptized 
believers without supposing that the preparation for his 
labors had been of a somewhat direct and very effective 
kind. But it was this great enthusiast who first inau- 
gurated a vigorous and comprehensive propaganda of 
Anti-pedobaptist principles. 

As early as 1525 there seems to have been an Anti- 
pedobaptist organization in the city of Steyer, 1 the strong- 
hold of mediaeval evangelical life. Even the names of 
the members of this little body of earnest Christians 
have been preserved and we are not left in ignorance of 
the handicrafts by which they gained their support. It 
is remarkable that a very large proportion of the Anti- 
pedobaptists of the sixteenth century, as of the Wal- 
denses of the earlier time, were artisans. Their ability 
to support themselves, even in times of bitter persecution, 
was due largely to the fact that they enjoyed the privi- 
leges of journeymen and members of the trade guilds 
that formed so prominent a feature of the industrial life 
of the time, and so were able, when driven from one lo- 
cality, readily to find entrance into another. 

Some time before Hut's visit two brethren from this 
region, one of whom was to attain to a position of leader- 
ship in the land of his adoption, had taken up their abode 
in Moravia. These were Jacob Wiedemann and Philip 
Jager, through whose advocacy the doctrine of commu- 
nity of goods came to prevail among the Moravian Anti- 
pedobaptist 5. 

1 Czerny, " Bauernkrieg," p. 58. 



HUT'S AUSTRIAN LABORS 209 

A recent Austrian writer 1 has made an elaborate effort 
to prove that the Anti-pedobaptists of Upper Austria rep- 
resent a direct development out of the persistent Wal- 
densian life of the mediaeval time and were wholly inde- 
pendent of Swiss influence. He seeks to show that the 
type of Anti-pedobaptist teaching that prevailed here 
before Hut's visit was widely different from the Swiss 
and that it was closely conformed to the mediaeval life 
and teaching that so widely prevailed in these regions 
during the thirteenth and following centuries. This 
effort can scarcely be pronounced a complete success. 
The materials for a comparison with the Swiss brethren 
are not abundant, and Anti-pedobaptists in general had 
so much in common with mediaeval evangelical parties 
that it is not easy to discern in the position of those of 
Upper Austria any material difference. 

Hans Hut, whom we have met as an influential leader 
in Augsburg, and whose widespread and highly effective 
activity as an evangelist has been referred to, was in 
1527 at the height of his popularity. The Nurnberg 
Council described him in March of this year as follows : 
"The highest and most eminent patron of the Baptists 
is Johannes Hut, a well-informed and clever fellow, of 
tolerably good physical proportions and of a boorish 
person, with light-brown cropped hair and with a pale- 
yellow little beard. His dress is a gray and sometimes a 
black riding coat, a gray, broad-brimmed hat and gray 
stockings." 

He had just been driven from Nikolsburg, where he 
had strongly attacked warfare as a Christian occupation, 
and had almost wrecked the church over which Hub- 
maier and Hans Spitalmaier presided, and of which the 



iNicoladoni, in his " Jon. Bunderlin." See Jakel's able critique of Nicoladoni in 
his gymnasial address, " Zur Frage iiber die Entstehung d. Taufergemeinden in 
Oberosterreich." 

O 



2IO A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Lords of Lichtenstein were members and patrons. He 
labored for some days in Vienna, and baptized fifty con- 
verts ; but the pastor of the Anti-pedobaptist congrega- 
tion, the ex-bishop Martin Gbschel, resisted him with such 
decision as to cause his speedy departure. He awakened 
much interest in Molk, where he probably found a body 
of Anti-pedobaptists, and was accompanied by two 
prominent and well-to-do citizens 1 of that place to Steyer. 
At Molk he baptized about fifteen. At Steyer he received 
marked distinction. The chaplain and castle preacher of 
the burggrave introduced him into the houses of dis- 
tinguished citizens, in some of which he was permitted 
to preach. He evangelized from one notable house to 
another under the patronage of Chaplain Jacob Portner, 
who was deeply impressed by Hut's understanding and 
exposition of Scripture. 

After a few days he retired to the country for baptizing 
and administering the Supper. This aroused the author- 
ities against him, and he was obliged to flee. His adher- 
ents were arrested, and the city incurred the severe 
censure of the king for so far encouraging this dangerous 
heretic. Chaplain Jacob, having embraced Hut's views 
and received baptism at his hands, went as a missionary 
to Freistadt. 

The provincial authorities invited the six cities of the 
province to send each a delegate to sit in council with 
the Steyer authorities for judging the accused. Of those 
arrested some disclaimed adherence to Hut, and secured 
release. Those who proved steadfast disclaimed any 
spirit of disloyalty toward the government. They were 
accustomed to pray for the king. They sought to obey 
the scriptural injunction to subject themselves to every 
human ordinance for the Lord's sake. Their meeting 

1 These were probably Hieronymus Hermann, of Mansee, and Carius Binder. The 
former was sent forth by Hut as a missionary from Steyer. 



HUT'S EVANGELISTS 211 

together in brotherly love had no revolutionary design ; 
their doctrine was not new, but the doctrine of Christ. 

After several efforts to secure their recantation had 
failed, the burgomaster, Zuvernumb, of Steyer, gave his 
opinion to this effect : " It is clear that either the accused 
are heretics or himself and all present are. As such they 
should be burned, but as an act of mercy they should be 
first executed with the sword." A large majority of the 
council favored milder measures and imprisonment until 
conversion was finally decided upon. 

The provincial authorities appealed to Vienna against 
this decision, and Ferdinand issued a mandate (March, 
1528) requiring the execution and burning of those who 
remained obstinate, and insisting that royal mandates 
shall be regarded as laws to be executed without regard 
to the consciences of those who sit in judgment. 

A number of executions followed. One of the prison- 
ers testified that Hut had introduced nothing new save 
the sign by which brethren could recognize each other. 
If a strange brother came he greeted them "in the Lord," 
and they thanked him " in the Lord," and they asked him 
whether he came "before or after the Lord." If he 
were a genuine brother his answer would be : " Neither 
before nor after but with the Lord." It was also ordered 
that houses in which Anabaptist meetings had been held 
with the consent of the owners be destroyed. 

According to the testimony of Hieronymus Hermann, 
of Mansee, a priest who had allied himself with Hut, the 
latter, while at Steyer, cast lots for four evangelists to 
be sent forth for proclaiming "the faith of Anabaptism." 
Hermann himself was one of the four chosen ; Leonard 
Schiemer, a well-educated monkish preacher, afterward a 
prominent Anti-pedobaptist, was the second ; a German 
priest (name not given) the third ; and Jacob Portner, 
the burggrave's chaplain, the fourth. 



212 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Cuntz Schmaus testified that he had been won to the 
brotherhood by Hut, and in company with him had gone 
from Vienna to Waldeck, and that in fourteen days they 
had won one_ hundred converts to their brotherhood. 
These facts are given to show the rapidity of Hut's move- 
ments, the overmastering enthusiasm that enabled him 
to gain to his cause not only multitudes of intelligent 
artisans, but educated priests and monks as well, and his 
wonderful ability to imbue his converts with his own 
missionary spirit and to send them forth as propagators 
of his principles. 

The enthusiasm aroused by Hut at this time was doubt- 
less due in some measure to his prophetic utterances with 
reference to the millennium. His little book on "The 
Seven Seals" set forth his views in a way that power- 
fully impressed the discontented masses. His idea seems 
to have been that three and a half years after the Peas- 
ants' War, that is in 1528, the godless of Europe would 
be destroyed by a Turkish invasion, while the true be- 
lievers would take refuge in various places, and be in 
readiness for a new reign of righteousness. That he 
had any purpose to resist and overthrow the magistracy 
he denied to the end. The Hutite propaganda went for- 
ward, from this time onward, with astonishing rapidity, 
and within a few months had covered the whole of Upper 
Austria. 1 

After the partial suppression of the Anti-pedobaptist 
cause at Steyer, Linz became the chief rallying point of 
the brethren. Hut visited the city in July. He gathered 
around him those already in partial or complete agree- 
ment with his views, baptized a considerable number, 

1 A recent Austrian writer, Nicoladoni, says (p. 35) : "At the end of the year 1527 
there was no city and no market-town in the land of Upper Austria in which con- 
fessors of the Baptist doctrine had not permanently or transiently taken up their 
abode ; nay, Baptist churches proper must have been formed about this time in 
almost every larger place." 



ANTI-PEDOBAPTISTS AT LINZ 21 3 

filled the little body with his enthusiasm, and set them 
to work preparing for the kingdom of God soon to be 
established. 

A considerable number of the severely persecuted 
brethren of Steyer sought homes in Linz, and for a time 
the cause prospered. We have the names and occupa- 
tions of many of the Linz members. More important 
than the local was the missionary work that this com- 
munity was able to accomplish in the surrounding regions. 
Few communities furnished to the Anti-pedobaptist cause 
a larger number of distinguished leaders. 

Among the more prominent leaders at Linz were 
Leonard of Wels, a schoolmaster ; Hans Fischer, former 
secretary of a nobleman ; Jacob Portner, who after his 
departure from Steyer had led the Anti-pedobaptists of 
Freistadt, but who at a later date labored for some time 
in Linz ; and Wolfgang Brandhuber, a tailor who had 
lived and labored for a time at Passau. His activity is 
said to have embraced the whole of Upper Austria proper 
and the diocese of Passau. He is regarded as one of the 
most influential leaders of the time and his execution, 
early in 1 5 3 1 , along with about seventy of his brethren 
and sisters, was a great calamity. Peter Riedemann, a 
Silesian, afterward to become a great leader in Moravia, 
labored at this time in a neighboring community, 
Gmunden, and suffered a long imprisonment for his faith. 

One of the most interesting characters among the Linz 
Anti-pedobaptists was Ambrose Spitalmaier. Although 
his labors were largely in other communities, it seems 
best to introduce here some account of his teachings. 
The record of his very thorough examination by the 
Erlangen authorities has been preserved and constitutes 
the best extant statement of the views of the Upper 
Austrian brethren at this time. Baptized by Hut at Linz 
in July, 1527, and set apart by him as a preacher of the 



214 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

gospel, he seems to have labored in and around Linz till 
September. Driven from his home he journeyed from 
place to place everywhere preaching and baptizing. He 
visited Augsburg, went thence to Niirnberg, where he 
was entertained by the saddlers' guild, and passing 
through Schwabach and Gunzenhausen came to Erlangen 
where he hoped to find a certain family to whom he had 
been directed by Hut. 

He was arrested at Erlangen about September twelfth, 
was examined repeatedly with the utmost care, torture 
being employed to some extent, and after a few months 
of imprisonment was executed in February, 1528. 

Spitalmaier was a man of marked intelligence, deep 
Scripture knowledge, and thorough grasp of religion in 
its inner spiritual sphere. We cannot believe that his 
religious convictions and experiences, and his study of 
the Bible, were matters of recent origin. They show a 
degree of maturity that must have been the result of 
years of evangelical life and thought. That he had been 
under the influence of the Lutheran movement is certain, 
that he had early imbibed the traditions and modes of 
thought of the mediaeval evangelicals is not improbable. 
He says : 

If any one desires to know our faith, we show him the will 
of God clearly in every creature, to each according to his occupa- 
tion through his own tool, as Christ has taught that man through 
his handiwork, as through a book which God has given him, can 
recognize his will, as a woman through the flax that she spins and 
through the household work in which she is engaged. To sum 
up, our doctrine is nothing else than that we teach all men to rec- 
ognize the will of God through the creature, as invisible things 
through the visible things that God has placed before our eyes. The 
chief result of such recognition of the will of God is the leading of a 
Christian life. This is the fundamental command of his teaching. . . 
Our teaching is nothing else, [he says again,] than from the 
eternal, pure word of God. Thus if I (or another) come to one who 
is not of this faith, I ask him first of all whether he is a Christian, 



AMBROSE SPITALMAIER 215 

what his Christian walk is, how he bears himself toward his brethren, 
whether he in association with others has all things in common, 
whether any one among them suffers want in respect of food and 
clothing, whether they practise mutual brotherly admonitions. 

Brotherhood he regards as involving a mutual obliga- 
tion on the part of believers to exhort each other and to 
guide each other in the right way, if one or the other is 
found astray ; to avoid all unseemly strife ; and to have 
all things in common, including spiritual as well as tem- 
poral gifts. We have this : 

He who as a member of Christ would enter into the heavenly king- 
dom on the day of judgment must live, suffer, and die in such a 
manner as Christ the head has died for us ; he who suffers not 
with him will not inherit with him ; he must drink the cup that he 
has drunk. But he who will not suffer here must there suffer in 
eternal fire. 

A real, genuine Christian should not have upon the whole earth so 
much as standing room for one foot. By this it is not meant that he 
should have no shelter and should sleep in the woods, that he should 
call his own no farm or meadow and should not labor, but only that 
he should not believe that what he has he must use for himself alone 
or say, the house is mine, the farm is mine, the penny is mine. He 
must rather believe that his possession is that of all his brethren. 

His Christology has some points of interest. He says : 

We hold and believe, that Christ here on earth became a real, 
essential man, such as we are, of flesh and blood, a son of Mary, 
who conceived him, however, without human seed. . . But ac- 
cording to his deity he was a natural Son of God from eternity to 
eternity, born in the paternal heart through the Word. . . With his 
sufferings he has quenched the eternal wrath of the Father against 
us and has procured for us his complacency. 

Again : " Christ did not make satisfaction for the sins 
of the whole world ; else no one would be damned.'' 
In this he would seem to be at one with the Particular 
Baptists of the later time, and at variance with most of 
his contemporaries. Less satisfactory is the following 



2l6 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

statement, which moreover it is difficult to reconcile with 
the statement already quoted about the deity of Christ : 
"As often as Christ is mentioned in Scripture by this 
name he is to be understood as a mere man with flesh 
and blood, corporeal and mortal as ourselves ; therefore 
that he is not God but a man, an instrument through 
which God has made known to us his word." He would 
seem to have denied the real union of the divine and the 
human in the person of Christ, and the germs of the 
later anti-trinitarianism may have inhered in his some- 
what confused thinking,, 

Infant baptism he regarded as not only superfluous, 
but as "a blaspheming of Christ." The administration 
of believers' baptism he described as follows: "They 
require no other words than, ' I baptize thee in the name 
of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,' and 
they take water in a dish or a cup, dip two fingers in it and 
make with them a cross on the brow of the candidate." 

He charges with jugglery and legerdemain those who 
maintain that in the bread and wine of the Supper the 
body and blood of Christ are contained. They are de- 
ceivers of men and murderers of souls. 

Mariolatry is condemned with the utmost decision. 
True believers have no special places of assembly and 
no ecclesiastical officers with authority over the bodies 
of believers. 

Spitalmaier persistently denied any hostility to magis- 
tracy as such, and any purpose to attempt its abolition 
by violent means. He admits that magistracy is a divine 
institution, but that "it has not remained in God, since 
it has overstepped its proper function and does so still 
to-day." He regarded the magistracy with which he 
was familiar as " blind and a leader of the blind, since it 
seeks only its own and not that which belongs to God, 
and therefore its judgment is false." True Christians, 



SPITALMAIER'S VIEWS 217 

" being meek in heart, need no magistracy, no sword, or 
constraint, for they do voluntarily that which is righteous. 
To the upright no law has been given, and only those 
Christians who are such merely in word require magistracy 
for their piety, else they would gouge out each others' 
eyes ; which compulsory piety however is not well- 
pleasing to God." He intimates that the work of true 
Christians is to proclaim the truth, and to secure its ac- 
ceptance by as many as possible. If they were ten to 
one in any community they would do nothing further 
than to pray for the ungodly minority that they also 
might be enlightened with the divine light. 

Hut's eschatological views had evidently made a deep 
impression on Spitalmaier. He regarded all the political 
and religious troubles of the time, including Turkish in- 
vasions, as penal judgments of God. The last day he 
regarded as imminent, and interpreted the prophetic 
Scriptures in accordance with this view. Enthusiasm 
was given to his preaching of repentance by his convic- 
tion that the time was short. Yet he seems not to have 
attempted to fix the exact date of the great catastrophe. 

Another citizen of Linz who attained to great promi- 
nence abroad was Johannes Btinderlin. 1 From 15 15 
to 1 5 19 he studied in the University of Vienna. Here 
he came under the influence of Humanistic modes of 
thought and was prepared for his later radical career. 
Returning to Upper Austria he seems to have taken part 
in the evangelical movement that advanced so rapidly 
from 1520 to 1525. For some time he was a preacher in 
the service of Lord Bartholomaus, of Starhemberg (about 
1526). It is probable that Bunderlin came under the in- 
fluence of Anti-pedobaptist teachings while engaged in 
this service, his patron's secretary, Hans Fischer, being 
among the earliest Anti-pedobaptists of this region. He 

1 See Nicoladoni, "J. Bunderlin." 



2l8 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

was baptized in Augsburg, probably in 1526, and after 
spending some time in Nikolsburg, Moravia, under the 
protection of Lichtenstein, he betook himself to Stras- 
burg, where he appeared in 1529. Strasburg was at 
this time the resort of all types of Anti-pedobaptists 
and Mystics. Persecuting measures of a mild form were 
now, perforce, being introduced, and Bunderlin was called 
upon to give an account of himself. Here he published 
several works in which he set forth mystical views far 
more radical than those of Denck, and in some respects 
less evangelical than those of Schwenckfeldt. 

The first of these works was on the contents of Holy 
Scripture, the second on the incarnation, and the third 
(published in 1530) was on baptism. The aim of the 
last was to show that "water baptism, together with 
other external usages practised in the apostolic churches, 
are continued by some of this time without God's com- 
mand and the testimony of Scripture." His thought was 
that baptism was given to the apostolic church by way of 
accommodation to the Jews, "who still clung to the let- 
ter of the law. Christians need neither baptism nor the 
Sapper." " Christ baptizes in the Holy Ghost and in 
fire, as from the beginning of the world this has taken 
place in every believing heart." 

Thus by 1530 Bunderlin had abandoned the baptism to 
which he had submitted some years before, and for which 
he had thought it worth his while to suffer, and had gone 
beyond Denck and beyond Schwenckfeldt in spiritualiz- 
ing Christianity and in disparaging external ordinances. 
His position at this time was similar to that of Faustus 
Socinus in the latter part of the sixteenth century and of 
the Society of Friends in the seventeenth. 

Freistadt also seems to have been invaded by radical 
forms of evangelical life before Hut's visit, about August, 
1527. It is probable that Hans Schlatter, an Upper Aus- 



GEORG SCHOFERL 219 

trian priest, who renounced popery in 1526 and after- 
ward spent some time with the Lord of Zelking in the 
neighborhood of Freistadt, exerted some influence in the 
town. This is rendered probable by the fact that a 
tract of his has been preserved among the inquisitorial 
acts of the town council. Schlaffer visited Augsburg, 
Nurnberg, Regensburg, and Nikolsburg (1526-7), and 
became acquainted with most of the Anti-pedobaptist 
leaders of the time. He suffered martyrdom in the 
Tyrol early in 1528. A number of his writings have 
been preserved. 

Here, as elsewhere, Hut baptized a considerable num- 
ber (ten or twelve) almost immediately after his arrival, 
and organized the body for aggressive work. Jacob 
Portner, whom he had set apart for missionary work at 
Steyer, was left in charge of the work at Freistadt, and 
may be regarded as the pastor of the church. 

Soon after Hut's departure persecution began, a num- 
ber were seized, and others escaped. Those tried for 
heresy were here, as elsewhere, artisans. This perse- 
cution was instigated by King Ferdinand who, as early as 
August 12, had learned of the procedures of Hut and his 
associates, and who looked upon their presence as fraught 
with danger, involving "conspiracy and secret evil prac- 
tices that lead to uproar and insubordination." Six had 
been arrested by August twenty-second. The most prom- 
inent of these was Georg Schoferl, whose confession of 
faith has been preserved. Much to the displeasure of 
Ferdinand, the examination of the accused was deferred 
until October. 

Schoferl and his companions strenuously denied that 
they had derived their doctrines from Hut, Zwingli, or 
Luther, and insisted that they had "taken them from 
God's word." They repudiate the charge that they 
have submitted to a " second baptism." They know of 



220 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

only one baptism authorized by Scripture, and this is the 
baptism of believers. If they err they are willing to be 
instructed. 

SchoferFs exposition of the Christian life represents a 
pure evangelical mysticism, like that of Ambrose Spital- 
maier, in which great stress is laid on the renunciation of 
self and all selfish ends, and a complete surrender of the 
entire being to God. Blessedness comes only through 
suffering. " Christ taught the common people the gospel 
in their own handicrafts, and did not have much to do 
with books, but for the sake of the stiff-necked scribes he 
used Scripture, for which purpose also Scripture must 
still be used, and not for the sake of the common man : 
for the common man can be more successfully instructed 
in the creatures." In this we have another indication of 
the strong mystical tendency of Upper Austrian Anti- 
pedobaptist thought. 

Here, as elsewhere, the persistent demands of Ferdi- 
nand led to the gradual suppression of the movement, 
and by 1530 few traces of it remained. It may be re- 
marked that most of those originally arrested were in- 
duced to purchase their freedom by renouncing their 
faith. 

Hut visited a number of other places and sent mis- 
sionaries into communities that he could not personally 
reach. During the years 1527-8 Anti-pedobaptist con- 
gregations, greater or smaller, more or less completely 
organized, existed in Wels, Gmunden, Lambach, Haag, 
Ried, Scharding, Brunau, Obenberg, St. Florian, Grein, 
Vocklapruck, and probably in many other places in Upper 
Austria. 

In close sympathy with the movement in Upper Aus- 
tria and the still more important and persistent one in 
the Tyrol, Styria, Carniola, and Salzburg were from 
1527 onward seriously affected by this type of teaching. 



MORAVIAN INFLUENCE 221 

Royal mandates and remonstrances, royal commissions 
for the inquisition of heresy, executions and banishments 
were here, as elsewhere, the order of the day. 

As the Anti-pedobaptist communities were transient in 
their nature, and as few leaders of outstanding influence 
appeared in those regions, such details as have come to 
light add little to our knowledge of their thought and 
life. 

Moravia became the great place of refuge for the per- 
secuted people of these and of other lands ; and if from 
time to time in later years Anti-pedobaptist life reap- 
peared, it was for the most part due to the active encour- 
agement of the vigorous and well-organized brotherhood 
that so long prospered in that goodly land. 

Literature: Pertinent works of Nicoladoni, Jakel, Beck, Preger, 
Czerny, Loserth, as in the Bibliography. 



CHAPTER XVII 

MORAVIA AND BOHEMIA (1528 ONWARD) 

SOON after Hubmaier's removal from Nikolsburg the 
controversy between Wiedemann and Jager on 
the one hand and Spitalmaier on the other became 
acute. The conduct of the Lichtensteins in delivering up 
Hubmaier to death had certainly not tended to weaken 
the party that rejected magistracy and insisted on com- 
munity of goods. The unfaithfulness of this Anti-pedo- 
baptist noble, as seen in his readiness to sacrifice his 
brethren to appease the royal fury and make secure his 
possessions, was an object-lesson of the most effective 
kind. 

With Wiedemann and Jager community of goods was 
of the very essence of Christianity. Their agitation of 
this question in season and out of season brought com- 
motion into the community. Spitalmaier publicly re- 
quested his followers to have nothing to do with Wiede- 
mann and Jager and applied to them contemptuous 
epithets. Lichtenstein could not tolerate schism, and 
while he was sorry to lose so large a number of valuable 
settlers, or to do anything that savored of intolerance, he 
felt constrained to send away those who could not con- 
scientiously abide by the existing order. Yet he did 
everything in his power to insure them against loss and 
unnecessary hardship, and personally accompanied them 
to the river that bounded his territory, urging them 
meanwhile to return and live at peace with the Nikolsburg 
pastor. They were inexorable, however, and proceeded 
on their way toward Austerlitz. 

When they had reached Neusslaw they sent a deputa- 



BLAWERMEL AND SCHARDING 223 

tion to the Austerlitz authorities to lay before them a 
frank statement of their views and wishes. They were 
cordially invited to settle and were assured that a thou- 
sand such would be welcome. Wagons were sent to con- 
vey the weary pilgrims to the city, where they were 
treated with the utmost kindness. They were provided 
with a desirable site for a communal house and with 
building materials. 

With the approval of the authorities, brethren were 
sent into other lands, especially the Tyrol, for reinforce- 
ments. The severe persecution in the Tyrol, Salzburg, 
and in Upper Austria in general (1529-33), made their mis- 
sion an easy one. Jacob Huter was sent by his Tyrolese 
brethren toward the close of 1529 to confer with them 
as regards doctrine and practice. His report was so 
favorable that large numbers soon emigrated. Huter 
himself remained in the Tyrol looking after the perse- 
cuted flocks until 15 31 when he made a second visit to 
Austerlitz, which as we shall see was of the utmost im- 
portance in the history of the movement. 

As early as 1527-28 we find Anti-pedobaptist com- 
munities at Znaim, Eibenschitz, Briin, and Rossnitz. At 
Rossnitz, Gabriel Scharding (Ascherham), a Bavarian fur- 
rier, had gathered the people and was acting as their 
minister. On the arrival of Philip Blawermel, a Swabian 
weaver, who seems to have enjoyed in a large measure 
the confidence and esteem of the majority of the com- 
munity, especially of those who had come from Swabia, 
Hesse, and the Palatinate, Gabriel withdrew from the 
position of leadership in his favor. The community hav- 
ing grown inconveniently large and difficulties having 
arisen between Philip and Gabriel and their adherents, 
Philip removed to Auspitz with a colony of five or six 
hundred adults. Gabriel was now at the head of a com- 
munity of about twelve hundred adults and afterward 



224 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

attained to a still more influential position as pastor of 
the united communities of Rossnitz, Auspitz, and Auster- 
litz. The reconciliation of parties and the union of com- 
munities was due to the influence of Jacob Huter and 
marks an epoch in the history of Moravian Anti-pedobap- 
tists. 

Between Huter's first and second visits (i 529-1 531) a 
lamentable schism had occurred in the Austerlitz com-, 
munity. In the expressive words of the chronicler : "In 
the meantime it came about, inasmuch as the devil does 
not rest but goes about the house of God like a roaring 
lion, seeking on all sides opportunity to introduce division 
and to destroy the unity of the Spirit in order that he 
may destroy that which is godly, he attacked it in the 
most favorable place, namely in the elders of the church, 
because the life of the whole people stands in them." 

The occasion of the trouble was Wilhelm Reublin, 
whom we have learned to know as one of the earliest, 
ablest, most eloquent, and most successful of Anti-pedo- 
baptist preachers. One-eyed Jacob had lost none of his 
zeal for community of goods and his zeal for sole leader- 
ship was just as marked. Jacob was one of those narrow, 
unamiable, stern, domineering ministers, whom people 
grow weary of, but from whose authority they find it 
difficult to escape. It might have been expected that 
with so large a community on his hands he would have 
invited the zealous and accomplished Reublin, who had 
suffered so much for the faith, to assist him. But no ! 
Though absent much of the time he positively and per- 
sistently refused to have another share his work. Mur- 
murings naturally multiplied. 

Some of the young sisters had shown a reluctance to 
enter into matrimonial relations with the marriageable 
brethren. One-eyed Jacob in his usual energetic style 
had told the sisters that if they persisted in their ob- 



WILHELM REUBLIN 225 

stinacy he " would be obliged to give the brethren 
heathen wives," and thereby had scandalized many. 
The sisters also complained that he " troubled them with 
strange questions," that he gave them lessons to learn, 
and that "those who succeeded in learning them and 
answered the questions skillfully were praised, while the 
simple and stupid, but yet true and pious, were thereby 
held up to ridicule and shame." Much sighing, com- 
plaining, and murmuring arose among the people in con- 
sequence of the failure of some of the members to con- 
form strictly to the rigorous rules of the community. 
Some were obliged to withdraw to other houses for lack 
of room in the communal house. Some were known to 
have " gone to market and to have purchased whatever 
they desired," and to have " sent food and drink to each 
other." The Tyrolese brethren complained that the 
teaching was not so edifying as that to which they had 
been accustomed. Many objected to the communistic 
method of bringing up children. 

Under such circumstances it could hardly have been ex- 
pected that Reublin should wholly abstain from exercis- 
ing his gifts, notwithstanding the fact that "he had not 
been called to the office of teacher " in the community. 
One-eyed Jacob, who was absent when Reublin began 
to hold meetings for the exposition of Scripture, did not 
fail on his return to resent this encroachment on his 
authority. He promptly called together "all the elders 
in the land," and with their concurrence, publicly de- 
nounced Reublin for this breach of church order. Reublin 
entreated them "for God's sake to give him an oppor- 
tunity to reply." This was peremptorily refused, and 
forty or fifty of Reublin's friends refused to have any- 
thing further to do with the majority until this righteous 
request should be accorded. 

Georg Zaunring, a minister in the church, was among 
p 



226 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Reublin's most zealous supporters. One-eyed Jacob 
warned the people against Reublin and Zaunring in lan- 
guage so intemperate that about one hundred more went 
over to' their side. But Jacob was master of the situa- 
tion, for he had absolute control of the entire commissariat. 
The starvation argument has rarely been applied with 
more heartlessness. " Zaunring and Reublin, together 
with the people, appeared before the house quite sad at 
heart. Then Reublin shook off the dust from his shoes 
over all that remained with Jacob for a testimony of their 
false and unrighteous judgment." 

With about one hundred and fifty followers, Zaunring 
and Reublin made their way to Auspitz. There "they 
were obliged to endure great hunger and need, and often 
had to live and labor on " water and a morsel of bread the 
whole day." Robbers also attacked them and beat some 
of them to death. " Deep calleth unto deep," is the re- 
flection of the chronicler. 

The Auspitz and Austerlitz churches each sent two 
delegates to the brethren in the Tyrol with the request 
that the latter would appoint two of their number to in- 
vestigate the difficulties that had arisen and to adjudicate 
on them. Jacob Huter and Sigismund Schutzinger were 
appointed. A pitiful charge against poor Reublin was 
trumped up, to the effect that when he had fallen into a 
severe illness he was found to have " reserved forty 
florins that he had brought with him from home." On 
the strength of this charge and that of his alleged irreg- 
ularity in setting himself up as a teacher without due 
authorization, Huter and Schutzinger excluded him as " a 
lying, unfaithful, malignant Ananias." Such treatment 
did one of the noblest of ministers receive at the hands 
of his brethren. 1 

1 Reublin's name disappears entirely from the Chronicle from this time. Recently 
an order of the Emperor Ferdinand (Feb., 1559) was discovered by Bossert in the Inns- 



RECKLESS CHURCH DISCIPLINE 227 

Reublin humiliated and driven out, the attention of the 
church was soon called to the "fleshly freedom " con- 
tained in the teachings of Avan Schlegel. This "fleshly 
freedom " seems to have been nothing more serious than 
a mild protest against the communism that Jacob Wiede- 
mann was enforcing. Schlegel was promptly deposed 
from his office and forbidden to teach, as was also his 
principal supporter Burkhardt von Ofen. These com- 
plained of the treatment they had received and were 
thereupon excommunicated. Bohemian David brought 
upon himself the censure of the church by " promising to 
pay and paying the authorities of Nicholshitz for some 
guards" to protect his party from robbers on their way 
to Auspitz. George Zaunring was deposed from his 
office and excluded from the church for receiving back 
his wife who had committed adultery. 

As a natural result of so reckless an exercise of dis- 
cipline the church soon found itself " destitute of pastors 
and teachers" and with only "ministers of temporal 
need," or deacons. The Tyrolese brethren were then 
requested to " come to their help with ministers." 
Huter and Schiitzinger again visited them and secured 
the reunion of the three churches, Rossnitz, Auspitz, and 
Austerlitz. Schiitzinger remained as pastor of the Auster- 
litz division, Gabriel continuing at Rossnitz as head pas- 
tor of the tripartite church and Philip retaining leadership 
at Auspitz. 

Huter returned to the Tyrol, whence he sent " one 
crowd of people after another to Schiitzinger and the 
church." In 1533 Huter himself, with many others, re- 

bruck archives, in which it is stated that Wilhelm Reble (this was a common way 
of writing his name) had made a long journey to lay before the emperor a request for 
aid in securing his inheritance at Rottenburg. He is spoken of as very old and his 
residence is given as Znaim, Moravia. How he spent the intervening twenty-eight 
years, we know not. An Anti-pedobaptist church of the Swiss type is known to have 
persisted at Znaim until 1591. It is probable that he quietly ministered to this body. 



228 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

moved to Auspitz, where he was most cordially received. 
To Schiitzinger and the rest of the brethren that greeted 
him he said that he had " not come as to strangers but as 
to dear brethren." He was asked to assist in the pas- 
toral care of the church, which he was by no means re- 
luctant to do. For the past two years he had been rec- 
ognized as the foremost leader of the entire connection 
in Austria and its dependencies, and had practically ruled 
the Moravian and the Tyrolese churches. Being still at 
the height of his zeal and activity he could not be ex- 
pected, as a member of the triparite church, to remain in 
a subordinate position. Gabriel could not begin to cope 
with him as regards administrative ability or popular 
power. He soon found occasion to exclude from the 
church his former colleague, Schiitzinger, along with his 
chief sympathizers, for failure to conform strictly to the 
principle of community of goods. 

Philip and Gabriel resisted Huter's high-handed meas- 
ures and a complete division ensued between the Huter- 
ites and the Philippists. " The Philippists would neither 
work, sit, eat, nor drink with the Huterites." The latter, 
owing to the great force of character and administrative 
ability of their leader, soon became the principal party 
and gradually absorbed the Gabrielite and Philippist fac- 
tions. 

In 1535 began the first great persecution of the Mora- 
vian Anti-pedobaptists. The edict of Speier had not 
been executed with much rigor in Moravia, but the 
abominations of the Miinster Kingdom (1534-35) had in- 
tensified the alarm that already prevailed among the 
rulers of Europe in consequence of the spread of Anti- 
pedobaptism. There was no longer any excuse for toler- 
ation. The Moravians and related bodies professed, to 
be sure, the utmost abhorrence of the Miinster proce- 
dures, but their own social ideas were completely out of 



PERSECUTION IN MORAVIA 229 

harmony with the views of civil government that pre- 
vailed, and the general prevalence of their principles and 
views would mean the complete subversion of the exist- 
ing order, to say nothing of the possibility that under 
favorable circumstances they might attempt to set up the 
kingdom of God in Munster fashion. 

The Moravian nobles, highly as they prized the Anti- 
pedobaptists as peaceable and industrious subjects, could 
no longer resist the demand of King Ferdinand for their 
extermination. Many of the unhappy people were de- 
stroyed. Their communities were ruthlessly broken up 
and under circumstances of the greatest hardship their 
members were scattered far and wide. Yet their scat- 
tering was not disorderly. On the contrary, the mem- 
bers were systematically divided up into small groups of 
eight or ten, each with a director, and wherever a group 
settled they were in a position at once to form the 
nucleus of a new community. Huter returned to the 
Tyrol, where, as we have already seen, he was arrested 
toward the end of the year and after suffering terrible 
tortures was burned at the stake, February 25, 1536. 
Thus died one of the ablest and most energetic of the 
leaders of the party, after ten years of highly fruitful 
service in the Tyrol and Moravia. 

The fierceness of persecution soon subsided, as the 
Moravian nobility were careful not to go beyond what 
the exigencies of the case required. Hans Amon be- 
came the leader of the Huterite party after the depart- 
ure of Huter and retained the position until his death 
in 1542. During his leadership many new "house- 
holds," as the communistic churches were called, were 
formed in Moravia, and several in Austria and Bohemia. 
It was their communism more than anything else that 
stood in the way of their securing toleration, yet they 
"were resolved, by God's help, to die rather than give 



230 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

up community of goods." In 1542 Hans Amon, "a true 
evangelical servant of Christ and superintendent of the 
whole church of God, after he had suffered many con- 
flicts and trials, after he had imparted to us, his fellow- 
believers, much wholesome doctrine, with peaceful heart 
fell asleep in the Lord at Stackowitz in Moravia." He 
designated as his successor Leonard Lanzenstiel, with 
whom the brethren soon associated Peter Riedemann, the 
ablest literary exponent of their principles. To him we 
are indebted for an admirable statement of the doctrine 
and practice of the party. 1 

Besides the Huterites, Philippists, and Gabrielites, 
there were still in 1543 several congregations of "Swiss 
Brethren," or followers of the early Swiss leaders and 
of Hubmaier. These rejected community of goods, paid 
the " blood-tax," and, according to their opponents, were 
neglectful of discipline. During Riedemann's able ad- 
ministration of the Huterite party many of the Philip- 
pists, Gabrielites, and Swiss Brethren 2 united with the 
more vigorous party. In 1550 there were seventeen 
"ministers of the word," thirty-one "ministers of 
need," and about twenty-five "households" in the 
Huterite connection. 

The years 1547-54 are called by the chronicler "the 
time of great persecution." Previous persecutions were 
as nothing compared with this. Many took refuge in 
Hungary, where some of the nobles received them 
kindly, but most of them returned to Moravia in 1549 

1 See Riedemann's " Rechenschafft unserer Religion," reprinted in Calvary's Mit- 
theilungen, Vol. I., pp. 256-417. 

2 These were the followers of Hubmaier, who under the protection of Lichtenstein 
and others had congregations at Bergen, Pohlau, Wisternitz, Voitsbrunn, Tasswitz, 
Urban, Seletitz, Jamnitz, Muschau, and Znaim. Oswald Glait, one of Hubmaier's 
earliest and ablest Moravian converts, labored in this interest till his death at 
Vienna by drowning in 1545- A body of Swiss Brethren existed at Znaim in 1591, 
and one at Eibenschitz persisted till 1618 or later. See Beck, " Geschichts-Bucher," 
?• 152- 



INDUSTRY AND PROSPERITY 23 1 

when the fierceness of persecution had somewhat 
abated. The narrative of this persecution is full of 
mournful interest and bears ample witness to the stead- 
fastness of the brethren. It is remarkable that they 
rapidly increased in numbers even during this time of 
great suffering. " Many became pious, amended their 
lives, took the cross upon them, more than often after- 
ward in good times." 

With 1554 began what the chronicler calls "the good 
time of the church," and it continued with slight inter- 
ruptions till 1592. During this long period the brethren 
enjoyed unbounded prosperity. Their churches and min- 
isters multiplied. When the Emperor Maximilian urged 
the Moravian nobles to renew the persecution in 1567, 
they replied that the country would suffer great loss from 
being thus deprived of its best mechanics and laborers. 
When he insisted that they must be expelled within a 
year, the nobles protested that this was impossible, as 
the people would sooner be beaten to death than go forth 
they knew not whither. Maximilian was not noted for 
persecuting zeal and was not inclined to press the matter 
to extremes. 

According to contemporary accounts the Moravian 
Anti-pedobaptists were highly skilled in the various me- 
chanical arts as well as in agriculture and stock-raising. 
Their cutlery, linens, and cloths are said to have been 
the best of their kind. Their courts were called the bee- 
hives of the land. Order, cleanliness, sobriety, and 
earnestness are said to have been manifest in their whole 
demeanor. Their widows and orphans were carefully 
provided for and pauperism was unknown. The nobles 
gladly frequented their baths, of which they maintained 
a number. The best of horses came forth from their 
stables. They had almost a monopoly in several 
branches of manufacture. The Moravian landlords, 



232 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Catholic and others, were glad to put them in charge of 
their farms, mills, wine cellars, etc. ; for they were 
known to be not only capable but strictly trustworthy. 
The communities became wealthy ; but they used their 
surplus means in succoring needy brethren in other 
places and such as were constantly coming to live among 
them. 

Even during this prosperous period they were heavily 
taxed and depredations were frequently made upon them. 
Times of scarcity, almost of famine, are recorded now and 
again ; but they made little of providential afflictions or 
of slight annoyances. About 1622 they are said to have 
numbered in all Moravia seventy thousand. 1 

From 1592 onward their history is that of misfortune 
and gradual decline. The Jesuits were on their track, 
and we know full well what that meant. The Thirty 
Years' War devastated the land, though not to the same 
extent as Bohemia. After suffering indescribable hard- 
ships during those perilous times, these hardy, industri- 
ous Anti-pedobaptists still constituted a vigorous party at 
the close of the war in 1648. 

From 165 1 onward they were utterly ruined by inva- 
sions of Germans, Turks, and Tartars, and by 1665 they 
had been reduced to such misery that they felt con- 
strained to petition the Mennonites in the Netherlands for 
aid. Many of them were taken captive by the Turks 
and conveyed to the far East. The Roman Catholic 
authorities, urged on by the Jesuits, massacred them 
mercilessly. According to the chronicler, "Some were 
torn to pieces on the rack, some were burned to ashes 
and powder, some were roasted on pillars, some were 
torn with red-hot tongs, some were shut up in houses and 
burned in masses, some were hanged on trees, some 

1 See Merian, " Topographia Bohemia?, Moravia?, et Silesia?," p. 46, quoted by 
Loserth. 



A SURVIVING REMNANT 233 

were executed with the sword, some were plunged into 
the water, many had gags put into their mouths so that 
they could not speak and were thus led away to death. 
Like sheep and lambs crowds of them were led away to 
be slaughtered and butchered. Others were starved or 
allowed to rot in noisome prisons. Many had holes 
burned through their backs and were left in this con- 
dition. Like owls and bitterns they dared not go abroad 
by day, but lived and crouched in rocks and caverns, in 
wild forests, in caves and pits. Many were hunted down 
with hounds and catchpoles," etc. 

"Whence does it arise," wrote one of their Roman 
Catholic persecutors, "that the Anabaptists so joyfully 
and confidently suffer the death penalty ? They dance 
and spring into the fire, they behold the glittering sword 
with undaunted hearts, they speak and preach to the 
people with smiling mouths, they sing psalms till the 
soul goes out, they die with joy as if they were in a 
festive company, they remain strong, confident, stead- 
fast even unto death." Like Luther, Faber attributed 
these phenomena to Satanic influence. 

"The holy land into which God brought them" no 
longer afforded them a refuge. Many of them escaped 
to Hungary and Siebenbiirgen where they maintained 
themselves in gradually diminishing numbers until they 
became extinct about 1762. A number of families re- 
moved to Wischeuka in Southern Russia, where they per- 
sisted until the present century. The remnant removed 
in 1874 to South Dakota, where, to the number of three 
hundred and fifty-two communicants, in five organiza- 
tions, they still maintain the faith and the customs of 
Jacob Huter. 1 

The historical documents of the Moravian Anti-pedo- 
baptists show us a people of marvelous steadfastness and 

1 See Carroll, " The Religious Forces of the United States," p. 213. 



234 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

undaunted courage. No more heroic martyrology exists. 
They evidently had not the slightest misgivings as to their 
position, and they considered the smallest of their pecu- 
liarities well worth dying for. Side by side with this un- 
swerving loyalty to conviction and intimately related to 
it we find a certain narrowness and punctiliousness, an 
incapacity to bear with each other in minor differences, a 
willingness to throw a whole community into turmoil and 
thus to hinder religious work and jeopardize their tolera- 
tion by the authorities on account of some slight per- 
sonal disagreement or some slight breach of discipline. 

Unable to tolerate each other in minor differences, we 
could not expect to find among them any due appreci- 
ation of the religious character of those who were at 
variance with them on fundamental points. Their ex- 
treme bigotry could not fail to make them hateful to those 
who did not share their peculiar views. 

Community of goods, as we have seen, was regarded 
by them as fundamental. It constituted one of the chief 
grounds of suspicion against them and encouraged to the 
utmost extreme separatism and bigotry. It involved a 
surrender of personal freedom not conducive to the high- 
est spiritual development. It rendered it possible for the 
head pastor and other officials to tyrannize over their 
brethren. It gave occasion to jealousies and murmur- 
ings and an unwholesome disposition to pry into each 
other's affairs. It practically destroyed family life by 
separating infants from their mothers and bringing them 
up together in communal nurseries. It excluded from 
the community the nobility and the gentry, many of 
whom openly sympathized with them in their main posi- 
tions, but did not feel called upon to surrender property 
and rank and to enter into communal life. 

On the other hand, this feature of their system was 
highly attractive to the poor and oppressed and doubtless 



DOCTRINE AND POLITY 235 

attracted a far larger number than it repelled. It gave to 
the brethren a certain solidarity and harmony of action 
that enabled them to hold together and to multiply in the 
face of bitter persecution and readily to meet the chari- 
table demands made upon them by the constant influx of 
persecuted and impoverished brethren from the West. 
Apart from their communism, their treatment by the 
civil authorities being supposed to be the same, it is 
difficult to see how they could have maintained a separate 
existence at all during the seventeenth century. 

Their doctrinal position was in general identical with 
that of the great Anti-pedobaptist body and with that of 
the principal mediaeval evangelical parties. They ac- 
cepted heartily the Apostles' Creed ; they seem to have 
been free from chiliasm ; and they were decidedly anti- 
Augustinian in their anthropology. Their views of the 
will, original sin, universal redemption, and related doc- 
trines, were similar to those of evangelical Arminians. 
As regards the subjects and the aim of baptism they 
were entirely at one with modern Baptists, but they did 
not come to see the importance of immersion as the 
apostolic mode. They were uncompromising in restrict- 
ing the Lord's Supper to those who had been baptized 
into their fellowship and were in good standing. Their 
views on oaths, magistracy, warfare, capital punishment, 
etc., were those of the mediaeval evangelical parties, of 
nearly all the Anabaptists (including the Mennonites), 
and of the later Society of Friends. 

Their church polity, apart from the communistic or- 
ganization already described, was as follows : The en- 
tire Huterite^rotherhood, with its local organizations or 
households, was presided over by a head pastor or 
bishop (in this also they followed the Waldenses and the 
Bohemian Brethren) appointed by representatives of the 
entire body. Under the head pastor were in each local 



236 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

congregation " ministers of the word " and " ministers of 
need." These officers, while they are commonly desig- 
nated as artisans of one sort or other, in prosperous and 
aggressive times devoted themselves largely to religious 
work, sometimes traveling into remote regions to minis- 
ter to persecuted and scattered flocks and to labor for the 
conversion of souls. 

Like the mediaeval parties already referred to and most 
of the other Anti-pedobaptists, they were somewhat 
narrow and one-sided as regards occupations. Merchan- 
dizing, money-lending, and inn-keeping, were strictly pro- 
hibited as immoral or as inconsistent with the simplicity 
of the gospel ; while physical labor was exalted and 
every member of the community was taught to work. 
A more industrious community probably never existed. 

In Bohemia the Anti-pedobaptist cause never attained 
to important proportions. The proclamation of Thomas 
Munzer in 1521 in the Bethlehem chapel at Prague, no 
doubt caused considerable commotion at the time and 
met with some response from those who had been under 
Taborite influence ; but there is no evidence that his 
visit resulted in any organized effort for the carrying out 
of his scheme. Hans Hut's labors in Upper Austria in 
1626-27 undoubtedly made some impression on the neigh- 
boring parts of Bohemia. A congregation had been or- 
ganized at Krumau some time before 1529, when, under 
the stress of persecution, eighty of its members went to 
Moravia and united with the Huterite party. They were 
led by Hans Amon, who as we have seen, afterward be- 
came the head pastor of the connection. 

The repudiation of Anabaptism by the Bohemian 
Brethren in 1534, in order to escape the operation of the 
laws against Anabaptists and to distinguish themselves 
from this aggressive form of Christianity, was from one 
point of view a hindrance and from another a help to the 



GEORG ZOBEL 237 

Anti-pedobaptist cause in Bohemia. It was thenceforth 
more difficult for the Anti-pedobaptists to carry forward 
their work undetected. It undoubtedly caused a consid- 
erable number of the Brethren who resented the aban- 
donment on grounds of expediency of one of the original 
practices of the connection, to unite with the more con- 
sistent and more aggressive body. 

Among the most noted of the Bohemian Anti-pedobap- 
tists of the latter part of the sixteenth century was 
Georg Zobel, the physician, who from 1581 to 1599 was 
frequently called upon to practise his profession in the 
imperial court and from whose skill the emperor himself 
is said to have derived great benefit. 

Chiefly through the encouragement of the Moravians 
individual congregations maintained themselves in Bo- 
hemia till the close of the sixteenth century ; but perse- 
cution was so continuous and severe, and it was so easy 
for persecuted bodies to make their way to their more 
favored brethren in Moravia, that the building up of a 
strong cause in Bohemia was impracticable. 

Literature : Pertinent works of Beck, Loserth, Cornelius (" Miinst. 
Aufr."), Wolny, Czerny, and Dudik, as in the Bibliography. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
THE STRASBURG CENTER 

SITUATED on the Rhine, the medium of communica- 
tion between the East and the West, at a point that 
commands the commerce of the valleys of several of the 
tributaries of the Rhine, and on the great route of com- 
merce between the North and the South, Strasburg was 
at the beginning of the sixteenth century an important 
manufacturing and distributing center. It was at the 
same time one of the most prosperous and one of the 
most cosmopolitan cities of the age. In the mediaeval 
time it had been a stronghold of evangelical life and 
thought. Like many other cities it had secured for itself 
a large measure of independence. Its reputation for jus- 
tice, moderation, and toleration was worldwide. The 
death penalty was rarely inflicted. Yet it was shrewdly 
remarked by a contemporary that better order prevailed 
there than in cities where the greatest severity was em- 
ployed. 

To the Anti-pedobaptists, hounded to death on all sides 
by persecutors, Protestant and Catholic, it became a 
veritable Eldorado. The large aggregation of artisans of 
all kinds offered the material from which the Anabaptists, 
like the Waldenses before them, assimilated most freely. 
Many of the evangelists were artisans and there was no 
city where they were more sure to find work, or failing 
this, hospitality. The liberality with which the citizens 
of Strasburg provided for the poor and distressed was 
extraordinary. New-comers, even when applying for aid, 
seem not to have been questioned about their faith, and 
as long as they conducted themselves so as not to disturb 
238 



CAPITO ON INFANT BAPTISM 239 

the public peace, citizens and strangers were free to be- 
lieve what they would. The evangelical pastors were 
men of marked liberality. It was only after the growth 
of the Anti-pedobaptist cause had become so marked as 
to threaten seriously the existing order that Bucer as- 
sumed a persecuting attitude. Later, when he saw Cap- 
ito, his chief colleague, on the point of being carried 
away by this new influence, he became somewhat intol- 
erant. Distinctly more tolerant was Matthew Zell, who 
never could be induced zealously to antagonize the sec- 
taries. "Whoever recognizes Christ as his Lord and 
Saviour shall have part at my table and I will have part 
with him in heaven." In accord with this motto was his 
bearing toward the Anti-pedobaptists and other oppo- 
nents of the standing order. Schwenckfeldt spent two 
years in his home. 

Wolfgang Capito was, if possible, still more friendly to 
the separatists. For years his attitude toward the Anti- 
pedobaptists was such as to cause the gravest anxiety to 
Zwingli, Bucer, and others. The position of Bucer in re- 
gard to infant baptism is succinctly expressed in the fol- 
lowing sentence : " But if any one would postpone water 
baptism and could do so without the destruction of love 
and unity with those among whom he lives, we would 
ourselves not quarrel with him nor condemn him, for the 
kingdom of God is just as little water baptism as it is eat- 
ing, drinking," etc. 

As late as December, 1 5 31, Bucer denied that there 
was any just cause for the Anabaptists' renunciation of 
communion with himself and the evangelicals of the city, 
and expressed a willingness to offer them the "sincere 
love that is known to be germane to the disciples of 
Christ . . . even if they persist in the abolition of in- 
fant baptism." 1 

1 See letter of Bucer to Ambrose Blaurer in Cornelius, Vol. II., p. 261. 



240 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

In 1526 or 1527 Capito began to show a strong inclina- 
tion toward the Anti-pedobaptist position. At this period 
he was greatly influenced by Cellarius, Hetzer, and 
Denck,- all like himself advanced Hebraists, and while 
differing in other matters agreeing in rejecting infant bap- 
tism as unscriptural and unwarranted. In 1528 Bucer 
regarded Capito as theoretically an Anti-pedobaptist. 
Cellarius offended Bucer and Capito took sides with the 
former. In his commentary on Hosea, Capito took occa- 
sion to refute Zwingli's and Bucer's arguments for infant 
baptism. He repudiated the idea that baptism sustains 
any relation to circumcision and could see no merit in the 
New Testament arguments used by Zwingli and Bucer 
in support of their position. He defined the church in 
such a way as to exclude infants, a profession of faith 
being a condition of membership. " In which symbols 
(baptism and the Lord's Supper) those rightly participate 
who participate in the first-fruits of the Spirit," expresses 
his idea of the proper use of the ordinances. Writing of 
the Anti-pedobaptist martyrs he says : " Those who 
under the harshest tyranny confirm Anabaptism with the 
confession of Christ, sin without malice if they sin." 
He could scarcely be dissuaded by Bucer (about Decem- 
ber, 1 531) from marrying the widow of an Anabaptist 
martyr. 1 For years Bucer tried in vain to deliver Capito 
from the influence of his Anti-pedobaptist associates and 
at times almost despaired of him. Yet in his later years 
even Capito became embittered against the people that 
were everywhere spoken against. 

Nowhere was the separatist life so varied as at Stras- 
burg. The bare mention of the names of the more in- 
fluential leaders that for a longer or shorter period 
brought their influence to bear upon the religious life of 

1 Augustin Bader, who suffered at Stuttgart. See letter of Bucer to Blaurer in Cor- 
nelius, Vol. II., p. 262. 



CARLSTADT, ECHSEL, AND GROSS 241 

the city will illustrate this statement. The list includes 
the names of Storch, Carlstadt, Cellarius, Denck, Het- 
zer, Kautz, Bunderlin, Reublin, Sattler, Wiedemann, 
Schwenckfeldt, Franck, Servetus, and Hoffman. 

Nicholas Storch is said to have visited Strasburg in the 
summer of 1524. With his mastery of the letter of 
Scripture and his extraordinary enthusiasm he soon made 
a deep impression, and as was everywhere the case, 
caused so much commotion that he was soon obliged to 
leave the city. That he left behind him those who 
formed the nucleus of a chiliastic Anti-pedobaptist com- 
munity can scarcely be doubted. 

Carlstadt, driven from Orlamtinde through Luther's 
efforts, visited Strasburg in October, 1524. At this 
time Carlstadt stood for the most complete individualism 
in matters of religion. To him the essential thing was 
the mystical union of the believer with God. All out- 
ward forms and ceremonies were of entirely subsidiary 
importance. "If one should not receive the sacrament 
forever, he would yet be blessed, if he were otherwise 
justified." Infant baptism was, in his view, without 
scriptural authority and without value for the Christian 
life. He favored its entire abolition. Yet he never be- 
came an Anabaptist, and after a few years of suffering 
he thought it advisable to hold in abeyance his views on 
baptism and to accept a professorship in the University 
of Basel. But at this time he represented a radical type 
of reform and repudiated the idea that, to avoid scandal 
and maintain unity, idolatry and other unscriptural and 
baneful things should be even temporarily retained in 
Christian churches. He had already taken issue with 
Luther on the doctrine of the Lord's Supper and was the 
forerunner of the Swiss theologians in holding to the 
memorial view. He was exceedingly bitter against 
Luther, whom he regarded as a cruel persecutor and a 
Q 



242 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

perverter of Scripture. Luther's influence was suffi- 
cient to secure the prohibition and confiscation of Carl- 
stadt's books and soon afterward the banishment of their 
author, who by the end of November had secured a con- 
siderable following and whose presence was thought to 
be fraught with danger. Yet Strasburg accepted Carl- 
stadt's view of the Supper in preference to that of Luther 
and a breach with Luther soon followed. 

During 1526 large numbers of Anabaptists from all 
parts of Alsace, Southern Germany, and Switzerland, 
streamed into Strasburg. Among the most influential of 
these were Wilhelm Echsel and Jacob Gross. The for- 
mer had been baptized in the canton of Zurich and had 
been banished thence ; the latter was one of Hubmaier's 
most faithful Waldshut followers, and since the fall of 
Waldshut had labored with zeal and success in the Griin- 
ingen district. In Strasburg he soon had a large follow- 
ing. A furrier by trade he baptized, among others, a fel- 
low-workman from St. Gall, named Matthew Hiller, and 
Georg Tucher of Weissenburg. In his conference with 
the authorities he expressed himself entirely in accord 
with Hubmaier's views as regards magistracy. In refer- 
ence to warfare his conscience would not allow him to 
engage personally in smiting people to death, but he 
would not object to standing guard, providing food for the 
soldiers, etc. Like most of the Anti-pedobaptists he 
steadfastly opposed oaths. His arguments against infant 
baptism are such as have already become familiar to us. 
He was imprisoned and afterward banished. 

The Anti-pedobaptist life of Strasburg was first organ- 
ized and made aggressive through the efforts of Hans 
Denck, who arrived in October, 1526. Here he was able 
almost immediately to gather around him and to impress 
with his peculiar modes of thought the unorganized ma- 
terial that had for some years awaited the advent of such 



MICHAEL SATTLER 243 

a master spirit. Even the tolerant Capito could write a 
few weeks after Denck's arrival complaining of the dis- 
turbances that the latter was creating. He understands 
not the spirit of such men, but he is assured that they 
are not of God who take away from us that which is 
distinctive in Christianity, nor leave any confidence in 
the suffering of the Lord. A colloquy with Bucer, 
Capito, and others, December 22, left a highly unfavor- 
able impression on the minds of the evangelical leaders 
and confirmed them in the conviction that they had to 
deal with an exceedingly able, but erratic and dangerous 
man. 

Denck's residence in Strasburg was of short duration. 
In response to an order of the council he departed on 
December 25. He spent some days at Zaubern, and at 
Landau held a disputation on infant baptism with Johann 
Bader, an evangelical pastor. Bader published a full re- 
port of the discussion under the impression that he had 
effectively defended the Pedobaptist cause ; but some 
years afterward he yielded to the force of Denck's argu- 
ments, rejected infant baptism, and became a follower 
of Schwenckfeldt. Denck next took up his abode at 
Worms, where he conducted himself quietly but exerted 
a strong influence in favor of radical Anti-pedobaptist re- 
form. 

While in Strasburg he had been closely associated with 
Hetzer, with whom he was zealously engaged in Bible 
translation. The latter still resided at the house of 
Capito and did not openly declare himself an Anti-pedo- 
baptist ; but he soon followed Denck to Worms, where he 
more openly espoused the Anabaptist cause. 

Another Anti-pedobaptist visitor to Strasburg was 
Michael Sattler, an ex-monk, who had labored in Swit- 
zerland and had been banished some time before. Even 
his opponents are lavish in their praise of his learning, 



244 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

amiability, and piety. He must have had a singularly 
attractive personality. He was entertained by Capito 
and after a short but not unfruitful stay departed in a 
perfectly peaceable way. He did an important work in 
Rottenburg and its vicinity, was probably the author of 
the Schleitheim Confession of February 24, 1527, and 
suffered martyrdom shortly afterward (May 20) at Rot- 
tenburg. Even Bucer could speak of him as a " martyr 
of Christ," who, "though he was a leader among the 
Baptists, was much more reasonable and honorable than 
some of the rest." According to Capito, he manifested 
"a great zeal for the honor of God and the church of 
Christ, which he wished to have pure and irreproach- 
able and free from offense to those who are without." 

In view of the rapid growth of the Anti-pedobaptist 
cause at Worms and the encouragement that the Stras- 
burg radicals were deriving from this source, the Stras- 
burg preachers addressed a "True Warning" to the 
authorities at Worms (July 2, 1527) calling attention to 
the doctrinal unsoundness of Denck and urging that 
measures be taken against the party. Under the advice 
of the ministers the Strasburg Council issued a rigorous 
mandate against the Anabaptists on July 27. All resi- 
dents of the city and land were strictly enjoined to 
guard themselves against Anabaptist error and prohib- 
ited from housing, harboring, supplying with food and 
drink, or giving secret encouragement to the sectaries. 
Undoubtedly it was the great influence of Zwingli that 
led the tolerant Strasburg ministers and council to 
assume a persecuting attitude, 

A few arrests were made and some were banished, 
but the council soon revoked its mandate so far as the 
banishment of the followers of Denck was concerned, 
and in November Capito could write to Zwingli : " Daily 
new Anabaptists arise, likewise they bring in new views 



REUBLIN AND KAUTZ 245 

upon new, which stand outside of any connection with 
the honor of God." He laments their extreme persist- 
ence in holding to their views even when they seem to 
have been argumentatively worsted. Yet he thinks he 
sees some improvement. 

Although a mild form of persecution continued they 
did not cease to multiply. When it became unsafe to 
hold large gatherings in the city they resorted to a neigh- 
boring forest where hundreds sometimes worshiped to- 
gether. A difficulty in dealing with the Anti-pedobap- 
tists lay in their conscientious objection to taking an 
oath. By arguments that do not now seem particularly 
cogent, Capito succeeded in convincing many of them of 
the lawfulness of oaths and Bucer was able to report in 
February, 1528, that all the Anabaptists had taken the 
oath. 

At Worms, Jacob Kautz, a brilliant and enthusiastic 
young preacher, who had enjoyed the fullest confidence 
of the Strasburg ministers, was won by Denck and Het- 
zer to the Anti-pedobaptist cause. On July 9, 1528, he 
set forth his position in seven articles. These contain, 
along with the ordinary Anabaptist view of the ordinances, 
the most objectionable features of Denck's system, ex- 
pressed in a manner that would doubtless have offended 
the latter. The external word is declared to be " not the 
true, living, eternally abiding word of God, but only 
the witness or indication of the inner." It is declared 
that in Christ will be more richly restored all that was 
lost through the first Adam, nay, that in Christ all man- 
kind shall become alive or blessed. 1 " Jesus Christ of 
Nazareth " is declared in no other way to have suffered 
or made satisfaction for us, than that we should stand in 



1 Like Denck, he was accused of teaching that "the devil together with all the 
impicus would be saved." See letter of Bedrotus to Ambrose Blaurer, in Cornelius, 
Vol. II., p. 261. 



246 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

his footsteps and traverse the road that he has beaten, 
and follow the command of the Father as did the Son. 

This clear and dogmatic statement of erroneous doc- 
trine was the occasion of severe persecution by order of 
the Elector of the Palatinate. In company with William 
Reublin, Kautz betook himself to Strasburg. Soon after 
his arrival he asked for a public disputation with the min- 
isters on the doctrines for which he stood ; but the 
authorities decided that he and Reublin should rather be 
dealt with privately by the ministers, inasmuch as their 
errors were "so fundamental." It was ordered, more- 
over, that the discussion take place in writing. On Jan- 
uary 15 Kautz and Reublin presented a statement of 
their views. In the first part they expounded their bap- 
tismal views, in the second they sharply criticised the 
Strasburg church order, or rather lack of order. Private 
conferences proved ineffective and both parties pressed 
for a public disputation. In the meantime the Anti-pedo- 
baptist cause was becoming daily stronger and more 
aggressive. The ministers were all the more eager for 
a public disputation because of the impression which was 
coming to prevail in Anti-pedobaptist circles that they 
feared the light. The edict of Speier (April, 1529) caused 
the council to refuse the demand ; for unless it was pre- 
pared for a wholesale butchery of the Anabaptists the 
less noise made about them the better. 

Kautz and Reublin had been imprisoned at an early 
stage of these procedures. Kautz having sickened was 
transferred to the hospital, where he enjoyed the minis- 
trations of his wife. In October, Capito and Schwenck- 
feldt requested the council to " leave Kautz to them for 
four weeks," promising to return him at the end of this 
time if he should remain unconverted. He persisted in 
his views and was banished. Reublin also became 
" miserably sick and lame " through long imprisonment, 



PERSECUTION 247 

and was banished. Having appeared again in an Ana- 
baptist gathering he was again banished, with the threat 
of drowning, after the Zurich fashion, in case he should 
be found again within the jurisdiction. 1 

Cellarius, the associate of Storch and Mtinzer, resided 
for years in Strasburg. Being a distinguished Orientalist 
and Old Testament scholar, he gained for a time almost 
complete ascendency over Capito. He was strongly op- 
posed to infant baptism, though he did not identify him- 
self with the Anabaptists. At this period he seems to 
have laid more stress upon his millenarian views than 
upon Anti-pedobaptism. He was one of the most enthu- 
siastic and scholarly millennialists of the time, and his 
interpretation of the prophetical Scriptures was largely in 
the interest of these views. 

Reference has already been made to Capito's sympa- 
thy with Anti-pedobaptist views and his strong disin- 
clination to the persecuting measures that Bucer advised. 
In 1528 or 1529 he wrote to Musculus: " The reckless pro- 
ceedings of my colleagues against them (the Anabaptists) 
frighten me." He expresses his hearty accord with Mus- 
culus in his compassionate and gentle treatment of the 
Anabaptists. He attributes to Bucer the cruel measures 
that the authorities are employing against them. "I op- 
pose, because in the sight of God the matter is to be dealt 
with, who indeed commands that the truth be left unmo- 
lested, but has not as yet seen fit to give any instructions 
as to whether errors should in any way be abolished and 
abjured." "I doubt not," he continues, "that with us 
everything would have remained entirely quiet if we had 
taken stricter account of the consciences of men and 
their exigencies. Often one proceeds not otherwise than 

1 In 1532 Kautz begged for permission to reside in Strasburg, which was refused. 
In 1636 we meet him again as schoolmaster at Iglau, in Moravia. See notice by 
Bossert in " Jahrbuch der Geselsch. f. d. Gesch., d. Prot. in Oesterreich," 1892, p. 
54 seq. 



248 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

as if profane things were being dealt with, and this takes 
place indeed through such as resting upon the judgments 
of others crassly condemn that of which they them- 
selves.have no proper understanding." 1 While he does 
not favor the abolition of infant baptism at the present 
time, he knows very well that the " considerations 
brought forward in support of infant baptism are without 
argumentative force." 

The imperial edict of Speier introduced a new era in 
Anabaptist history. In the countries of the Swabian 
league and, in fact, in most countries belonging to the 
empire, Anabaptists were henceforth hunted down like 
wild beasts, and thousands were mercilessly destroyed. 
Nearly all of the original leaders had passed away. 
Strasburg now became more than ever the western cen- 
ter of the movement. From Bavaria, Baden, the Pa- 
latinate, the Tyrol, Wiirtemberg, Holland, Zealand, and 
other countries, Anabaptists flocked to Strasburg. Many 
of them had already suffered for the gospel. Immersion 
may in some instances have been practised here at this 
time. 2 Large numbers were thrown into prison and ex- 
amined, some of them under torture. The object of the 
application of torture was to ascertain whether the Ana- 
baptists practised community of wives, and whether they 
were plotting revolution. Among the leaders at this time 
were Pilgram Marbeck, Melchior Hofmann, Hans Biinder- 
lin, and Andreas Hiiber, an ex-priest of high standing. 

1 He probably refers to Bucer's dependence on Zwingli's judgment in such 
matters. 

2 Gerbert (" Stras. Sectenbewegung," p. 93) states that baptism occurred at this 
time "before the Butchers' Gate, probably in a branch of the Rhine." He refers to 
confessions of Anabaptists recorded in Wencker's MS. " Actensammlung." Rohr- 
ich quotes from the Acts a confession of Bertel and Esinger, that they were "bap- 
tized before the gate by a shoemaker." Others at the same time mentioned houses 
in which they had been baptized (" Zeitschr. f. Hist. Theol.," i860, p. 48). Whether 
being "baptized before the gate" implies immersion, is a question that cannot be 
answered with confidence without further information as to the location of the gate 
referred to, etc. 



MARBECK AND BUCER 249 

Marbeck was, after Denck, by far the most important 
personage among the Strasburg Anti-pedobaptists. A 
Tyrolese by birth, and a member of a monastic order, 
he embraced Anabaptist views some time before 1527. 
Driven by persecution from his home he resided for some 
time (1527-8) in Augsburg. He removed to Strasburg in 
October, 1528. He was a skillful engineer and an enter- 
prising business man. The city was suffering from an 
insufficient supply of fuel. Marbeck advised the council 
to purchase forests in the Ehn and the Kinzig valleys, 
and directed the rafting of the wood. Owing partly to 
his business engagements he did not assume the leader- 
ship of the party till 1530 or 1531. The Anabaptists, 
according to Bucer, "worshiped him like a god." Mar- 
garetha Blaurer, sister of the famous Ambrose Blauer, 
and one of the most eminent Christian women of the 
time, took a profound interest in Marbeck, whose influ- 
ence over her Bucer vainly endeavored to destroy. She 
reproached Bucer for his harsh and rough treatment of 
the Anti-pedobaptists, his unseemly prejudice against 
them, and his lack of a proper understanding of their 
position. His prestige as a business man and the friend- 
ship of such personages as Margaretha Blaurer enabled 
Marbeck for some time to carry forward his work with 
comparative freedom. 

In October, 1 531, he published two books in defense of 
his principles. This was made the pretext for his im- 
prisonment. After fruitless conferences with Pollio and 
Capito, he was allowed to discuss with Bucer before the 
council the points at issue. An abbreviated but appar- 
ently careful record of the two days' discussion has been 
preserved in the Strasburg archives. In these proced- 
ures Marbeck conducted himself with much dignity, and 
his defense of his position was, from a Baptist point of 
view, eminently satisfactory. 



250 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

In the beginning of the discussion he states that he 
appears before the council not because he recognizes the 
authority of any human judgment in matters of faith, 
nor to discuss with the preachers alone, but rather that 
he may speak with all Christians. He expresses a will- 
ingness to follow Bucer in case he should be overcome 
in argument, and asks that Bucer follow him in case the 
former be vanquished. He rebukes the spirit of hatred 
and strife that exists between the papists and the follow- 
ers of Bucer, and between Luther and Zwingli, and 
urges the council to put away all respect of persons as 
among papists, evangelicals, and Anti-pedobaptists. If 
this shall take place, good will result ; if not, matters will 
grow worse. Like Kautz and Reublin, he complains that 
there is no proper church order in Strasburg. " Every 
Christian should subject himself to the biblical word and 
the work of Christ, not that works have anything to do 
with the matter, but that every one should give himself 
up to the obedience of Christ, which is accomplished in 
him through the grace of God. . . Moses' at God's 
command used the staff, which was changed into a ser- 
pent not in the power of the staff, but from the power of 
God's command. So also I have accepted baptism as a 
witness of the obedience of faith, not that I have regard 
to the water, but only to God's word." Bucer admits 
that there is no special command to baptize infants, but 
insists that there is also no special command to baptize 
adults. The discussion followed well-beaten paths on 
both sides. 

The council decided in favor of Bucer and decreed 
the banishment of Marbeck. He obtained permission to 
remain a few weeks to arrange his affairs, but after 
making an earnest plea for the suspension of persecu- 
tion and the granting of toleration and support to "those 
miserable men who have no abiding place in the whole 



MARBECK'S TEACHINGS 25 1 

world, and who flee to you," he was obliged to depart 
early in January, 1532. Marbeck's plea for liberty of 
conscience deserves to be placed by the side of that of 
Hubmaier. 

After spending some time at Ulm he again took up his 
residence at Augsburg. Until his death, about 1546, he 
was the guiding spirit of an Anti-pedobaptist movement 
that had many congregations scattered throughout the 
region between Ulm and the Neckar, and that from 1535 
onward, owing in part to the lamentable corruption of 
the evangelical churches, grew from year to year. He 
seems to have kept up a regular correspondence with the 
brethren in Moravia. Among his influential supporters 
were the noblewomen Marpurga Marschalk of Pappen- 
heim and her kinswoman Magdalena. These seem to 
have been active members of an Anti-pedobaptist church. 
He was intimately acquainted with Lady Helena Strei- 
cher, a disciple of Schwenckfeldt, whom he sought to 
win to the support of his cause. In 1542 he published 
an exposition of his teachings regarding baptism, sin, 
hereditary sin, divine worship, magistracy, the Supper, 
etc. 1 A copy of this work he sent to Helena Streicher, 
whose polemical zeal for Schwenckfeldt's views was 
aroused thereby. She replied that she could not agree 
with him nor accept the views of the " Baptists." They 
have an external water baptism without the Spirit. 
"You are washed through your baptism, but not sanc- 
tified." She regarded the " Baptists " as " bodily pious 
people," but not as "children of God." "They make 
of the cross an idol " and "degrade Christ to a servant 
according to the flesh." She exhorts Marbeck to free 
himself from the outward elements. Marbeck rejoined 
in a letter of twenty pages, in which he sought to correct 

^'Vermahnung auch ganz klarer griindlicher und unwidersprechl. Bericht zu 
wahrer Christlicher ewig bestandiger Bnider-Vereinigung." 



252 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

her misapprehensions respecting the views of his breth- 
ren. He knows only "of one baptism . . . that is the 
baptism of the Lord, the washing away of my sin . . . 
If you 'know of two baptisms, show me the Scripture 
therefor." He agrees that mere water baptism, without 
the Spirit, is a vain work, but he repudiates the charge 
that the baptism of his brethren is such. This letter, 
with the printed book, Helena put into Schwenckfeldt's 
hands, who, after private correspondence had proved una- 
vailing, wrote a sharp polemic against Marbeck and Mag- 
dalena Marschalk. Marbeck replied to Schwenckfeldt's 
"Judicium" with considerable bitterness, charging him 
with making "false accusations," whereby he would 
"fill with doubts the consciences of the weak, perplex 
the zealous, blind the eyes of the simple, and throw sus- 
picion on the covenant's witness with Christ." The 
congregations under Marbeck's charge seem to have 
been considerably disturbed by Schwenckfeldtian mys- 
ticism, and shortly before his death he thought it neces- 
sary to make discussion with Schwenckfeldt a matter of 
church discipline. 

Few Anti-pedobaptist teachers were permitted to labor 
so long or so fruitfully as Pilgram Marbeck, and no one 
maintained a more unblemished reputation. The writ- 
ings of his opponents abound in recognitions of his high 
character and of his ability as a Christian teacher. 1 

From 1 531 the authorities were careful to suppress any 
attempt at aggressive work on the part of the Anti-pedo- 
baptists, but remnants of the party long existed. 

Literature: Pertinent works of Gerbert, T. W. Rohrich, G. W. 

1 For the facts about Marbeck's career after his banishment from Strasburg I am 
indebted to Prof. Dr. J. Loserth, who on the basis of materials contained in the Beck 
Collection has recently published " Two Biographical Sketches " (" Zwei Biograph- 
ische Skizzen"), of which one is occupied with Marbeck. He informs us that a col- 
lection of Marbeck's writings (presumably in English) is to be published in America. 



LITERATURE 253 

Rbhrich, Keller ("Ein Apost."), Baum ("Capito u. Butzer"), 
Erbkam, Hagen, Heberle, Keim, C. Meyer, Cornelius (" Miinst. 
Aufr."), Trechsel, Nicoladoni, Loserth (" Zwei Biog. Skizzen"), 
Arnold, and Gobel, as in the Bibliography ; the contemporary 
writings (including correspondence) of Zwingli, Bucer, Capito, 
Franck, Schwenckfeldt, Hetzer, Denck, Kautz, Biinderlin, Marbeck, 
and the " Getrewe Warnung d. Prediger." 



CHAPTER XIX 

MELCHIOR HOFMANN AND STRASBURG 

TWO years and a half before the banishment of Pil- 
gram Marbeck from Strasburg there appeared upon 
the scene a man who was to exert a momentous, nay, 
a disastrous influence on the Anti-pedobaptist cause. 
This was Melchior Hofmann, a native of Hall in Swabia 
and a furrier by trade. Like Nicholas Storch he was pro- 
foundly versed in the letter of Scripture and supposed 
himself to be in possession of a key to all the mysteries 
of the sacred book. Naturally he was deeply interested 
in the prophetical Scriptures and the book of Daniel and 
the Apocalypse had for him special attractions. These he 
interpreted with reference to his own times and he rev- 
eled in thoughts of millennial glories about to be re- 
vealed. He seems to have accepted Luther's views at 
an early date, and about the middle of 1523 we find him 
zealously laboring for reform at Wolmar in Livonia. 

The fact that he was an artisan no doubt gave him 
greater influence with the masses than he could other- 
wise have attained ; but his eloquence and enthusiasm 
and his extraordinary Bible knowledge would have awak- 
ened profound and widespread interest under any cir- 
cumstances. If he had enjoyed the advantages of a 
regular education Hofmann would certainly have taken 
rank with the foremost men of his age. He was after a 
time imprisoned and banished by the head of the Teu- 
tonic Knights, who held control in those regions. 

In the summer of 1524 we find him laboring in Dorpat 
with such zeal and success, that when the bishop's sher- 
iff attempted to arrest him the people would not permit 
254 



HOFMANN AT DORPAT 255 

his imprisonment and in retaliation for the affront offered 
to their preacher they raided the churches and destroyed 
images, pictures, etc. In the riot that followed lives were 
lost on both sides. 

The authorities soon afterward gave full recognition to 
Lutheranism, and had not suspicion been aroused as to 
his orthodoxy Hofmann might have remained in Dorpat ; 
but his allegorical method of interpreting the Scriptures 
and the fanatical tendency of his chiliastic teachings led 
the authorities to require, as a condition of his further 
engaging in religious work, a certificate of orthodoxy 
from theologians of repute. At Riga he secured such a 
certificate, but the suspicion was too profound to be al- 
layed by any lower authority than that of Luther him- 
self. So to Wittenberg he went, June, 1525, and though 
Luther was not without misgivings he did not feel free to 
withhold the desired testimonial. 

While at Wittenberg Hofmann published his first book 
in the form of an address to the church at Dorpat, in 
which he expressed himself on most points quite in 
accord with Luther's views and condemned fanaticism of 
the Miinzer type (the Peasants' War had just ended dis- 
astrously). Yet in its allegorizing and its prophetical 
forecasts it contained the germs of much of his later ex- 
travagance. 

Returning to Dorpat he found that even Luther's en- 
dorsement had not sufficed to remove the dislike and sus- 
picion of the clergy and the secular authorities. The fact 
that he was a mere mechanic without theological educa- 
tion, and that he gloried in preaching the gospel without 
cost while supporting himself by his handicraft, was no 
doubt one reason for the aversion of the clergy ; the 
peculiar and over-confident type of his teaching was cer- 
tainly another. He was soon involved in controversy 
with the Lutheran ministers, and Luther called himself a 



256 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

fool for having commended him. The controversy re- 
sulted in Hofmann's banishment. 

We next find him in Sweden, where the Reformation 
had already made considerable progress, but the contest 
with Roman Catholicism was still acute. He arrived at 
Stockholm about the beginning of 1526 and soon secured 
recognition as a preacher of the gospel. Here he pub- 
lished " A Short Exhortation to the Assembly of Believ- 
ers in Livonia." A chiliastic interpretation of the 
twelfth chapter of Daniel was embodied in this work. 
From this time onward chiliasm formed the mainspring 
of Hofmann's activity. As a specimen of his exegesis 
his interpretation of the four beasts (Ezek. 1 and Rev. 4) 
may be cited, The lion is the law, the calf stands for 
the " figures " or typical passages in the Old Testament. 
The twelve wings of the two beasts designate the twelve 
tribes of Israel. In the New Testament the human coun- 
tenance and the eagle prevail. By the former he under- 
stands the parables and similitudes which Christ ex- 
pressed in the spirit of man. Among them " lies the 
eagle enswathed, which the children of God taste and 
feel in their hearts." By the eagle he seems to under- 
stand the Holy Spirit. Equally fantastic is his interpreta- 
tion of the Apocalypse. 

Soon afterward he published a fuller exposition of 
Daniel 12, together with a scriptural justification of lay 
preaching, a discussion of the Supper, of confession, and 
of the office of the keys. He still held fast to the Lu- 
theran doctrine of justification, predestination, and the 
will. 

In his doctrine of the Supper he departed from the 
Lutheran doctrine of the real presence and adopted sub 
stantially the Carlstadt-Zwinglian view. The believer 
partakes of Christ through faith in his word or under the 
sign and seal of the sacrament. " The bread which thou 



THE SUPPER AND MAGISTRACY 257 

in faith and in the power of the word receivest, this is to 
thee the body, and the drink is to thee the blood of 
Christ." 

The church he regarded as a democratic organization 
in which all members have equal rights. The clergy are 
shepherds and not lords and have no further power than 
to preach the word. Every layman moreover has the 
full right to exercise his gifts. Every one is under obli- 
gation to contribute his being to the kingdom of God. 

Magistracy he regards as intended only for evil-doers. 
If all were Christians there would be no need for it. 
Oaths he rejects unconditionally as prohibited by Christ 
himself. 

He now undertook to fix the time of the end of the 
dispensation by computation from prophetic data, and 1533 
was the result reached. 

Thus we see this remarkable man already equipped 
with the allegorical and chiliastic system of the mediaeval 
Franciscan sects (Joachimites, etc.) and with the old- 
evangelical views of magistracy, oaths, lay evangelism, 
etc. Was Hofmann a product of the sect-life of the pre- 
Reformation time, or did he derive his peculiar views 
from various sources after he became interested in 
Lutheranism ? His perfect familiarity with the letter of 
Scripture and the thoroughness with which he was im- 
bued with allegorical methods of interpretation and with 
chiliastic modes of thought make it probable that these 
were not recent acquisitions, but that he acquired them 
in his youth. That they were the products of his own 
mind cannot for a moment be accepted as probable. 
The influence direct or indirect of Storch, Munzer, and 
Carlstadt, and that of the Swiss Anti-pedobaptists must 
in any case be recognized. 

In Stockholm, as elsewhere, Hofmann's preaching 
seems to have been provocative of disorderly and icono- 



258 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

clastic procedures. Leaving Stockholm early in 1527 he 
went to Lubeck, where he at once awakened much popu- 
lar interest, and where the usual riotous demonstrations 
attended his ministry. 

King Frederick I., of Denmark, became greatly inter- 
ested in the artisan preacher toward the close of 1527 
and invited him to Kiel, not precisely as court preacher, 
but rather as a general evangelist. Here he labored for 
about two years, keeping his chiliastic views constantly 
to the front. Amsdorf published against his views of 
prophecy in 1528, and other of the Lutheran leaders, 
including Luther himself, encouraged by their letters the 
growing local opposition. 

He continued to publish largely in defense and in ex- 
position of his views, having purchased with the pro- 
ceeds of his handicraft a printing plant for this purpose. 
His exposition of the tabernacle, in which each minutest 
part is supposed to have a profound spiritual significance, 
contains most of the features of the method current 
among the Plymouth Brethren. His polemical writings 
are denunciatory, but scarcely more so than those of his 
Wittenberg opponents. Having been drawn into a con- 
troversy on the Supper he took distinctly anti-Lutheran 
ground, and after a disputation with the Lutheran 
preachers he was banished. 

He maintained that Luther's earlier teaching (1523) was 
in accord with his own, and that the former had since 
changed his position. But he had little regard for the 
authority of man. "If all emperors, kings, princes, 
popes, bishops, cardinals, stood in one heap, the truth 
should and must be confessed to the honor of God." He 
was now in communication with Carlstadt, who visited 
him in Holstein and who no doubt influenced him con- 
siderably in his view of the Supper. 

Plundered of his goods (to the value, as he estimated, 



PLUNDERED AND BANISHED 259 

of one thousand florins), he left Holstein for East Fries- 
land in company with Carlstadt. Luther's doctrine had 
gained wide acceptance in East Friesland, but a reaction 
was setting in under the leadership of Aportanus in favor 
of the Zwinglian view of the Supper and related doc- 
trines. Carlstadt is said to have thrown himself into 
the anti-Lutheran movement with the most passionate 
zeal. Hofmann occupied himself at first with preparing 
his account of the disputation which had resulted in his 
banishment. It is probable that during his short sojourn 
he formed connections which were of value to him in the 
great work that he accomplished there at a later date. 

Hofmann reached Strasburg in June, 1529, where he 
was heartily received by the ministers as one who had 
suffered for his defense of the Zwinglian view of the 
Supper. It would seem that he had already reached the 
conclusion that the human nature of Christ was not de- 
rived from Mary, but that it only passed through her 
body like water through a tube. This view, along with 
his chiliasm, formed henceforth an important part of his 
teaching and he was able to give it such currency that it 
became a feature of later Mennonite theology. Like the 
Gnostics of the earlier time and the Cathari of the Mid- 
dle Ages, he supposed it a degradation of Christ to assert 
that he partook of our corrupt nature and thought to 
exalt Christ by denying his true humanity. 

The Strasburg ministers soon discovered that they had 
a dangerous visionary on their hands and advised him to 
give up preaching and return to his trade ; but he was 
too thoroughly convinced that he was under the direct 
guidance of the Holy Spirit and that God had a great 
work for him to do to act upon this advice. Of all 
men he thought himself best qualified to expound the 
Scriptures and to tell the world what it needed to know. 
He formed at this time intimate relations with Schwenck- 



n 



260 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

feldt, though it does not appear that either greatly in- 
fluenced the other. 

During this visit he published a number of writings in 
exposition of his prophetic views, including a somewhat 
detailed exposition of the Apocalypse, in which he applies 
the prophecies to the events of history in such a way as 
to show that they have nearly all been fulfilled and that 
the final catastrophe is at hand. The thousand years of 
the Apocalypse Hofmann regarded as already past, yet 
his carnal view of the kingdom of Christ fully justifies 
us in calling him a chiliast. We can sympathize with 
Hofmann's recent biographer, F. O. Zur Linden, when 
he says in reference to Hofmann's attempt to interpret 
the Apocalypse as contrasted with Luther's attitude of 
reserve : " Oh, that he too had let this book alone, how 
much confusion and misfortune would the world and es- 
pecially our Low-Dutch lands have been spared ! " 

Hofmann, like the other dissenters of the time, came 
to look upon Luther as an arch-persecutor and murderer 
of God's people, as a Judas, nay, a Satan. 

At Strasburg Hofmann formed the acquaintance of 
Leonard Jost and his wife Ursula, who supposed them- 
selves to be the recipients of divine revelations, and 
in 1530 he published one of Ursula's visions, with an 
interpretion of Rev. 12, which he applied to the emperor 
in a way that the council regarded as treasonable. At 
about the same time he made bold to petition the council 
for the use of one of the churches. It is probable that he 
now formally entered into relations with such Anti-pedo- 
baptists as were in accord with his views, and was him- 
self baptized. 

Driven from the city on the ground of the publication 
before mentioned he returned at once to Friesland where 
the controversies that were raging between Lutherans 
and Zwinglians gave him ready access. 



HOFMANN AT STRASBURG 26 1 

His wonderful work in the Netherlands and in West- 
phalia during the next three years will be narrated in a 
future chapter. Suffice it here to say that largely 
through his efforts these countries were covered with en- 
thusiastic Anti-pedobaptists, who by reason of the chili- 
astic teachings of Hofmann were ready to be led by some 
of his fanatical disciples into the fearful excesses of 
Munster. He seems to have made a secret and flying 
visit to Strasburg in November, 1530. 

Some time after he had broken with Lutheranism con- 
cerning the Supper he continued to hold with the Luther- 
ans as regards predestination, the will, and related sub- 
jects. With his rejection of infant baptism he now put 
himself into accord with Anti-pedobaptist modes of 
thought on these points as well. 

He returned to Strasburg early in 1533, under the im- 
pression that this city was to be the New Jerusalem 
whence the conquering hosts of God would march forth 
to destroy the enemies of the truth. In this course he 
supposed that he was acting under immediate divine di- 
rection. He scrupulously avoided appearing in public as 
a teacher, and on days when he was likely to be visited 
at his lodging to such an extent as might furnish occasion 
for suspicion he prudently absented himself. A com- 
plete change seems to have come over the bold, reckless 
preacher. 

He was closely associated with Leonard Jost, whose 
prophecies he compared to those of Isaiah and Jeremiah, 
and with a number of prophetical women. Since the 
banishment of Pilgram Marbeck and other moderate 
teachers it is probable that a larger proportion of the 
Strasburg Anti-pedobaptists were ready to listen to the 
dreams of a Hofmann than was the case when he first 
visited the city. Moreover, the terrible fate that had be- 
fallen their brethren throughout most of Europe through 



262 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

the execution of the imperial edict of Speier had done 
much to prepare the minds of Anti-pedobaptists to receive 
hospitably any assurance that a special divine interposi- 
tion was at hand for the deliverance of the persecuted 
host. Hofmann's reputation as a mighty evangelist 
must have given weight to his utterances. Still he had 
the ear of only a section of the Strasburg Anabaptist 
community. 

Claus Frei, a disciple of Hofmann, had left his wife 
and eight children, under the supposed prompting of the 
Spirit, and was living with a widow who felt herself 
drawn to him by the same influence. He was repudiated 
by Hofmann and the Anti-pedobaptists in general. On 
his refusal to abandon his adulterous life, after having 
been repeatedly ordered to do so, he was drowned by 
order of the council in 1534. 

It may be said of Hofmann that while there is every 
reason for believing that he was sincere in his prophesy- 
ing and his entire religious life, and while he never sup- 
posed himself commissioned to command Christians to 
take up arms against the enemies of God or to commit 
any immoral act, his reliance on visions and his gen- 
eral method of teaching were such as could not fail to 
lead others less fundamentally sound than himself to 
"take their own fleshly inclinations for the promptings of 
God's Spirit and to commit all kinds of enormities in the 
name of religion. The Munster Kingdom was a natural 
outgrowth of Hofmann's teachings, however shocking 
the atrocities of Munster must have been to him. 

One of the prophetesses saw in a vision on a river a 
white swan that sang with wonderful sweetness. She 
interpreted the vision to mean that Hofmann was the 
white swan and the true Elias who was expected before 
the end of the age. At another time she saw the walls 
of the city studded with dead men's heads. She searched 



HOFMANN AND THE MUNSTER KINGDOM 263 

and found the head of Hofmann. It smiled at her in a 
friendly way ; whereupon all the rest of the heads came 
to life. 

Before Hofmann left Friesland an aged brother had 
prophesied that he must return to Strasburg, suffer six 
months' imprisonment, and then lead the children of God 
to universal victory. He patiently awaited the fulfill- 
ment of this prophecy. 

Meanwhile he published a number of works, among 
them a treatise on " The Sword," in which he denied the 
right of the civil magistracy to jurisdiction in religious 
matters, and a prophecy with reference to the imminent 
inauguration of the new dispensation at Strasburg. He 
was thrown into prison (May, 1533), where he died ten 
years later. 

There is something highly pathetic in the patience 
with which he endured his imprisonment and in his faith 
in his own prophecies and those of his associates which 
could not be shaken by failure of fulfillment. He seems 
to have continued to the end of his life to fix the date of 
the beginning of the new order of things a short time 
ahead. When the time arrived, instead of abandoning 
the prophesying, he would go over his computations 
anew and remove his date forward a stage. The close 
connection of his modes of thought with the Munster 
Kingdom (1535) made it impracticable for the Strasburg 
authorites to release him, and intensified the bitterness 
with which Anti-pedobaptists were everywhere perse- 
cuted. 

Literature: Gerbert, Zur Linden, Krohn, T. W. Rohrich, Cor- 
nelius ("Miinst. Aufr."), as in the Bibliography, and Hofmann's 
writings. 



CHAPTER XX 
HOFMANN AND THE NETHERLANDS 

THE Netherlands, which in the time of the Protestant 
revolution belonged to the imperial domains, pos- 
sessed during the Middle Ages a large measure of evan- 
gelical light. During the latter part of the fifteenth cen- 
tury and the early years of the sixteenth, large numbers 
of Waldenses were discovered by the officers of the 
Inquisition, compelled by the most cruel tortures to con- 
fess to the most abominable teachings and deeds, and were 
then burned at the stake. Among these were a number 
of men and women of high rank. The Brethren of the 
Common Life with their evangelical mysticism and their 
earnest devotion to Bible study and to the promotion of 
popular education had here their chief stronghold. From 
1477 onward the Bible was widely circulated in the ver- 
nacular and zealously studied. A vast amount of asceti- 
cal and mystical devotional literature was circulated 
during the early years of the sixteenth century. This 
was nearly all Catholic, it is true, but its circulation 
shows that Christian life was energetic and it prepared 
the way for evangelicalism of a more thorough-going type. 
The density of the population, the large number of pros- 
perous cities, the presence of a large and influential 
artisan class, the facilities for travel furnished by the 
natural and artificial waterways, well fitted the Nether- 
lands for the activity of radical types of evangelical life. 
Luther's earlier reformatory writings were widely cir- 
culated and eagerly read. Zwinglianism had come into 
conflict with Lutheranism from 1526 onward and the 
strife had reached an acute stage by 1529. 
264 



LUTHERAN AND ZWINGLIAN VIEWS 265 

Carlstadt and Hofmann availed themselves of this 
controversy in 1529 to diffuse with their own substan- 
tially Zwinglian view of the Supper their more radical 
schemes of reform. Neither Lutheranism nor Zwinglian- 
ism had at this time gained sufficient foothold among the 
people to be able to resist the strong popular influence of 
Hofmann, who with all the enthusiasm and confidence of 
a prophet proclaimed the approaching end of the age and 
warned men to flee from the coming wrath. 

A few representatives of the earlier Swiss and German 
Anti-pedobaptist movements had no doubt taken up their 
abode in the Netherlands and disseminated their views 
within narrow circles long before the appearance of Hof- 
mann. It is probable that out of the evangelical life of 
the earlier time, under the impulse of the great Prot- 
estant movement individuals here and there, or even 
small communities, had come independently to Anti-pedo- 
baptist views. But it remained for Hofmann to inau- 
gurate an enthusiastic propaganda of these principles in 
combination with his chiliastic perversions. 

It is stated on the authority of eye-witnesses that Hof- 
mann did not proclaim himself an Anti-pedobaptist im- 
mediately on his return to Emden in May, 1530. He is 
said to have still posed as a Zwinglian and thereby to 
have gained such an influence over the entire anti-Lu- 
theran element as enabled him successfully to promulgate 
his more radical views a little later. He found a portion 
of the evangelical clergy ready to adopt his Anti-pedo- 
baptist views as soon as he saw fit to announce them. 
Friesland was at this time a refuge for the persecuted 
evangelicals of Holland as well as from Catholic German 
countries. The local government was tolerant and en- 
forced the imperial decrees as little as possible, whereas 
in Holland persecuting edicts were at this time remorse- 
lessly executed. The evangelical element in Friesland 



266 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

was likely, therefore, to represent a somewhat radical 
type of Protestantism. 

The contemporary accounts of Hofmann's activity in 
East Friesland are conflicting. The Lutheran authorities 
have evidently wished to exaggerate the extent to which 
their Zwinglian opponents were carried away by Ana- 
baptist fanaticism ; the Zwinglians for obvious reasons 
have sought to minify the extent of the defection. It is 
certain that some of the Zwinglian ministers opposed 
Hofmann, while others defended him. Among his oppo- 
nents was Aportanus, the most influential of them all, 
through whose influence the Count Enno had been 
brought to favor Zwinglianism as against Lutheranism 
and who died a few months after Hofmann's arrival. It 
seems certain that Hofmann for a time had the use of a 
room in the church, where he publicly baptized. He is 
said within a short time to have baptized at Emden about 
three hundred. 

Difficulties having arisen in Emden which interfered 
with the further prosecution of his work, he left the 
church he had organized in the care of Jan Trijpmaker, 
and about the first of October went forth as an apostolic 
herald to proclaim the gospel covenant and to gather out 
from the multitudes the " lovers of the truth." 

About this time he published one of the most remark- 
able of his works, entitled " The Ordinance of God," in 
which he sets forth the programme of his great enter- 
prise. By the ordinance of God he means the baptismal 
command of Christ (Matthew 28 : 18 seq.), which he 
adopts as the motto of his book and expounds clause by 
clause. He understands the passage to teach that the 
redemptive work of Christ is universal, and that the ob- 
ligation rests upon contemporary believers to make a 
universal proclamation of the gospel. He takes occasion 
to repudiate the Lutheran doctrine of justification by 



HOFMANN'S POSITION 267 

faith alone, and insists upon a "faith that brings forth its 
true fruits." "Where the power and the truly good 
works of righteousness are not present, there also is 
no justification." Like the old-evangelical party, he 
lays great stress on the imitation of Christ in his life of 
holiness and self-sacrifice. 

So in the matter of baptism. "Jesus came to the 
Jordan, bound himself there through the water-bath of 
baptism with God, and offered up to him in all submis- 
siveness his own will. Thereupon God opened the 
heavens and sent down upon Jesus all his power, his 
Spirit, his heart, and his will, and received him as his 
dear son." In all points should the children of God and 
the brethren of Jesus be imitators of him. He designates 
baptism "the true sign of the covenant." This should 
be received by believers publicly without fear of men as 
the act whereby we entrust ourselves to Christ and unite 
ourselves with him in order that henceforth we may be 
obedient to the will of the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
Spirit alone. By the reception of water baptism we be- 
come incorporated into the body of which Christ is the 
head. Hofmann's view of the Supper, as here presented, 
is thoroughly spiritual and, like his view of baptism, from 
the Baptist point of view unobjectionable. 

After a journey back to Strasburg, in which he prob- 
ably did much missionary work, he went to Holland. 
Here also Lutheranism had been introduced to a consider- 
able extent some years before, and had been success- 
fully combated by Zwinglianism, which seems to have 
been more in accord with Netherlandish modes of thought. 
Persecution of evangelical Christianity had prevailed from 
1525 till 1531, and wonderfully prepared the minds and 
hearts of the people for the gospel that Hofmann was 
about to proclaim, with the speedy setting up of the king- 
dom of God and the destruction of God's enemies. 



268 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

In 1525 some Anti-pedobaptists from upper Germany 
are said to have gone to Holland, but their influence can 
scarcely be detected. In 1527 we meet with a party of 
separatists who had formed themselves into a brother- 
hood to await the advent of Christ. In the same year, 
Jan Walen and two of his brethren from Krommenies- 
dijk, in Waterland, were burned as Anabaptists in Hol- 
land. 

Trijpmaker, whom Hofmann had left at Emden, re- 
moved to Amsterdam about November, 1530, where he 
carried forward the Hofmannite propaganda with great 
zeal and success. While making Amsterdam the center 
of his activity he itinerated widely among the cities of 
Holland, organizing in many places churches of " the 
lovers of the truth," who accepted at his hands the "sign 
of the covenant." 

Hofmann appeared in Holland early in 1 5 3 1, and of 
course took the leading part in the aggressive work. His 
numerous writings were no doubt very widely circulated 
and must have been highly influential. Trijpmaker had 
labored quietly and secretly and so had not come in con- 
flict with the authorities. Hofmann was less circumspect 
and soon had to flee from Amsterdam to escape arrest. 
Trijpmaker himself fell into the hands of the authorities 
and, along with eight of his fellow-believers, was be- 
headed in December, 1531. They showed wonderful 
heroism and devotion to their principles. 

Hofmann now promulgated an order that baptism be 
suspended for two years, just as the building of the tem- 
ple under Zerubbabel was suspended for two years, and 
intimated that at the end of this time there would be a 
wonderful manifestation of God's power on behalf of the 
lovers of the truth. The effect of Hofmann's thus fixing 
the date of the advent of Christ and the setting up his 
kingdom on earth was truly wonderful. His disciples 



THE END OF THE AGE, 1 533 269 

were filled with the enthusiasm of those who are assured 
that they have a great mission to fulfill, and that the 
time is strictly limited. They must indeed work while it 
is called to-day. There was no longer any uncertainty 
as to the future. Two years of enthusiastic service 
would bring them into a glorious inheritance. From this 
time forward the growth of the Hofmannite party in Hol- 
land was very rapid. Lutheranism and Zwinglianism 
almost completely vanished, and from this time until 
1566 evangelical teaching was almost exclusively of the 
Anti-pedobaptist type. From Holland the movement ex- 
tended throughout the Netherlands and into the surround- 
ing countries, as well as into England. 

Before leaving Holland Hofmann published his work on 
"Fettered and Free Will." This is one of his ablest 
works. As he had already put himself on record against 
Luther's teachings regarding the Supper, predestination, 
and baptism, he now combats with acuteness and warmth 
his doctrine of the will, and thus put himself in one ad- 
ditional particular in accord with the theological system 
of the medieval evangelical parties and of the various 
parties of the Anti-pedobaptists. 

In this, as in several writings that followed, he adopted 
as a Scripture motto, " He that hath ears, let him hear." 
While he holds fast to the view that salvation is only of 
grace and only through Christ, he insists on the univer- 
sality of Christ's redemptive work. To every man, after 
enlightenment has been received through the preaching 
of God's word, is given free power of choice between 
life and death. God compels no one to come into his 
kingdom. His doctrine of the will, as all other points of 
his teaching, he illustrates strikingly from the Old Tes- 
tament through the application of the allegorical method. 

Hofmann seems to have made another journey up the 
Rhine at the end of 1 531, for he appeared in Strasburg in 



270 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

December, where he soon afterward issued two other 
works. In one of these he vigorously combats what he 
takes to be the Lutheran doctrine of Satan, death, hell, 
sin, and eternal damnation, which he maintains have not 
their origin in God, but are the outgrowth of self-will. 
If there had been no self-will there would also be no 
Satan, no hell, no death, no pain, and no damnation. 
He denounces the view of " the false apostle " (Luther) 
that some men were created unto damnation. Not God 
but Adam is the originator of sin, and through his fall his 
posterity have come into the power of sin, death, and 
damnation, so that only God through the incarnation of 
his Word can erase the injuries wrought through the first 
man. While in these doctrinal treatises his chiliastic 
views are kept in the background, they have by no 
means been lost sight of. 

In a work entitled " The Joyful Witness of the True, 
Peaceable, Eternal Gospel," published at this time, Hof- 
mann gives us some means of judging of the degree of 
acceptance that has been accorded to his teachings in 
upper Germany. He complains that after the truth has 
been taught for three years he still sees no people who 
will hear. " O God, what a dreadful time is this, that I 
still see no true evangelists, yea, even know no writer in 
the whole of Germany who has borne witness to the 
true faith and the everlasting gospel." 

It would seem that up to this time the great majority 
of the Strasburg Anti-pedobaptists looked upon him with 
distrust, and so narrow and bigoted was he that he was 
incapable of recognizing anything as truth and gospel 
that was not in entire accord with his own views. In 
fact, he seems to have regarded with the utmost hatred, 
and as due to Satanic influence, the teachings of all who 
were at variance with himself. In this, to be sure, he 
followed the example of some of the leading Reformers. 



THE INCARNATION 27 1 

Hitherto he had spared the Zwinglians in his polemics. 
He now denounced them as "miserable, treacherous 
thieves of God's honor.' 

In 1532 appeared his work on " The true, all-glorious, 
sole Majesty of God, and of the true Incarnation of the 
Eternal Word and Son of the Most High." In this trea- 
tise he sets forth dogmatically the view that he had for 
some years been teaching as to the flesh of Christ, the 
true humanity of which he denied. It is probable that 
Hofmann had already (1532) touched Hesse with his per- 
sonal influence. It is certain that soon afterward large 
numbers of Anabaptists were to be found there who 
agreed with him in his characteristic views. 

His last missionary journey to the Netherlands occupied 
part of 1532 and part of 1533. His work was largely 
that of giving encouragement and direction to his faithful 
evangelists and visiting the various flocks. Yet he was 
not without opposition among his own people. We find 
that his authority to suspend the administration of bap- 
tism for two years was called in question by Jan Mat- 
thys, who had been baptized by Trijpmaker, and whose 
influence was soon vastly to exceed that of Hofmann 
himself. 

It was probably at this time that Hofmann made his 
missionary tour through West Friesland, where he already 
had many disciples. It was the heroic martyr death of 
Sicke Snyder, a West Frieslander who had been brought 
under the influence of Hofmann's views at Emden, and 
had there received baptism, that led to the conversion 
of Menno Simons. 

In 1533 he published his exposition of the Epistle to 
the Romans, in which he seeks to explain the ninth 
chapter of the epistle in accord with his own view of 
universal redemption, and puts himself on record in 
favor of the civil magistracy as an institution ordained 



272 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

of God. In this latter point he may have had in view 
the revolutionary utterances and acts of Jan Matthys 
that were already giving cause for the gravest anxiety 
and that were so speedily to precipitate the Anti-pedo- 
baptist life of the Netherlands, Westphalia, and neigh- 
boring countries into the horrors of Miinster. 

Of Hofmann's return to Strasburg to await the inaugu- 
ration of the new dispensation and of his imprisonment 
during the remainder of life, mention has already been 
made. 

Literature: Zur Linden, Leendertz, Krohn, Cornelius (" Nederl. 
Wiedert." and " Miinst. Aufr."), De Hoop-Scheffer, Brons, Gobel, 
as in the Bibliography ; and the writings of Hofmann. 



CHAPTER XXI 
HESSE, JULICH-CLEVE, AND WESTPHALIA 

THE Landgrave Philip of Hesse was, with all his moral 
delinquencies, by far the most tolerant of all the 
princes of Germany. In spite of the entreaties and re- 
monstrances of such neighboring princes as Duke John 
George, of Saxony, and of such Protestant leaders as 
Luther, Melancthon, and Bucer, and in spite of the im- 
perial edict of Speier, he steadfastly refused to deal 
severely with the Anti-pedobaptists. The Peasants' 
War of 1525, which his contemporaries were wont to 
charge to their account, had involved his own domain 
and he had been personally engaged in suppressing this 
popular uprising, yet he not only refused to put the peas- 
ants to death, but he allowed a man who had been promi- 
nently engaged in the movement and who perpetuated 
many of Munzer's peculiar teachings, to labor for years 
in his territory when Anti-pedobaptists were being re- 
morselessly butchered by nearly all the princes of the 
empire, and when his attention was constantly being 
called in the sharpest way to his delinquency and to the 
exceeding peril of toleration. 

It is remarkable that while up to 1530 at least two 
thousand of the sectaries had been executed in the em- 
pire, not one execution had taken place in Hesse. In 
1529, in response to a remonstrance from the Elector of 
Saxony, he wrote : " We are still unable at the present 
time to find it in our conscience to have any one executed 
with the sword on account of his faith." 

Even after the Miinster catastrophe, when other princes 
were slaughtering Anti-pedobaptists indiscriminately as 

s 273 



274 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

all alike revolutionary and capable, under favorable cir- 
cumstances, of the atrocities of Munster, he insisted on 
making a distinction between fanatics of the Munster 
type -and evangelical advocates of believers' baptism. 
"Some of them are simple, pious people," he writes to 
John Frederick, of Saxony, who was urging him to ex- 
terminate Anabaptists without discrimination, " and must 
be treated with moderation." 

He admits that those who have taken the sword may 
be suitably executed by the sword, but insists that those 
who simply err in their faith should be dealt with moder- 
ately and won back to the truth through loving ministry. 
In case they do not yield to such treatment and give 
trouble in their community, they may be banished. 
" But to punish capitally, as has happened in some prin- 
cipalities in the land, those who have done nothing more 
than err in the faith, cannot indeed be justified on gospel 
grounds." 

The Saxon princes under the influence of Luther and 
Melancthon gave no quarter to Anti-pedobaptists of any 
type, and it was regarded by them as a serious grievance 
that Philip so obstinately refused to co-operate with them 
in the work of extermination. 

The most noted and influential of the Hessian Anti- 
pedobaptists was undoubtedly Melchior Rinck, who, on 
account of the identity of their first names and the simi- 
larity of some of their views, has been confounded by 
many writers with Hofmann. Rinck was a man of dis- 
tinguished scholarship who, probably by reason of his 
mastery of the Greek language, was often called "the 
Greek." According to some early writers he was one 
of the Zwickau prophets who visited Wittenberg in 1521, 
but this is probably a mistake. We find him in Hersfeld 
in 1523, as schoolmaster and chaplain. Along with 
Heinrich Fuchs he came into conflict with the concubi- 



MELCHIOR RINCK 275 

nary pastor. The latter was worsted to the delight of the 
Wittenbergers. 

He seems about this time to have come under the in- 
fluence of Thomas Munzer and to have become a prom- 
inent agitator side by side with Munzer and Pfeiffer. 
When he entered into relations with Munzer he was pas- 
tor at Echardshausen. Escaping with his life from the 
battle of Frankenhausen he was for some time a fugitive 
and we are unable to trace his career. We find him at 
Worms in 1527 signing a challenge for a disputation on 
baptism along with Denck, Hetzer, and Kautz. He seems 
soon afterward to have settled down in the neighborhood 
of Hersfeld where he formed an Anti-pedobaptist church 
and to have exerted a considerable influence throughout 
Hesse. 

He was often arrested and the most determined efforts 
were made by Hessian officials and foreign princes and 
theologians to induce the Landgrave to authorize his exe- 
cution. According to Balthasar Raidt, whom Philip ap- 
pointed to labor with him, Rinck maintained that all who 
follow Luther and teach as he does are leading the people 
to the devil, denied that any are damned for hereditary 
sin who have not come to the age of intelligence and per- 
sonally acquiesced in sin, maintained that all who re- 
ceive the sacrament according to Luther's view receive 
a devil every time they do so, denied predestination, 
maintained that infants baptized in the Lutheran or popish 
way are sacrificed to the devil, insisted upon believers' 
baptism, denied the real presence in the Supper, and held 
that man can through the denial and renunciation of his 
works, of the creature, and of himself, through his natural 
powers, prepare himself for faith and come to the Spirit 
of God. 

The harsh expression about the sacrament he after- 
ward denied having used, but he certainly looked with 



276 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

great disfavor on Luther's doctrine of the real presence. 
In this account of Rinck's doctrines no mention is made 
of his chiliastic views ; but in this regard he is known to 
have been in sympathy with Munzer, and he is said to 
have been in Miinster in 1533 a short time before the out- 
burst of fanaticism. 

No further trace of him can be found. Some have 
supposed that he met his end in the Munster conflict, but 
he certainly did not appear among the leaders and it is 
likely that he left or died before the city came into the 
hands of the Anti-pedobaptists. 

Rinck's labors extended into many places in Saxony 
and Thuringia, where, however, persecution was so per- 
sistent as to be from the beginning practically extermin- 
ating. In these countries nothing like an organized ex- 
istence with continuity of effort was possible. Many 
Anti-pedobaptists appeared from time to time and churches 
were organized in many places ; but the Wittenberg theo- 
logians were too alert to leave them long undetected and 
they constantly urged upon the civil rulers the duty of 
using the utmost severity toward those who would re- 
store primitive Christianity. 

We have seen that through the labors of Hofmann 
Anti-pedobaptism of the Hofmannite type was during the 
years 1530-33 widely diffused throughout the Nether- 
lands and the neighboring countries. Mention has also 
been made of the baleful influence exerted by Jan 
Matthys. Hofmann, under divine direction as he sup- 
posed, had ordered the suspension of baptism for two 
years. He was himself Elias, Enoch would appear later 
and be revealed to the faithful. In two years the saints 
would gather at Strasburg, the new Jerusalem, and to 
the number of one hundred and forty-four thousand 
would go forth in the name of the Lord to set up his 
kingdom. Hofmann had gone to Strasburg to await the 



MUNSTER AND ROTHMANN 277 

great event and in accordance with a prophecy was lying 
in prison. As the end of 1533 drew near expectation 
was at its height and the wildest excitement prevailed 
throughout Hofmannite circles, now become very wide. 

The city of Munster and Westphalia in general, after 
the suppression of the peasant uprising of 1525, had ex- 
cluded Protestantism in all forms with the utmost rigor. 
Munster was a great ecclesiastical center and was 
governed by a most dissolute prince-bishop, whose oppo- 
sition to Protestantism was on personal and political far 
more than on religious grounds. The clergy were indif- 
ferent to the wants of the people and incapable in any 
case of supplying them. 

The spirit of liberty had not been destroyed when the 
peasants were crushed, neither was it possible to keep 
from the knowledge of the people the evangelical work 
that was going on all around them. The intensest eager- 
ness for evangelical teaching arose and soon became irre- 
pressible. 

In 1529 Bernard Rothmann, a brilliant young clergy- 
man who had been educated at Deventer in the school 
of the Brethren of the Common Life, and who had come 
somewhat under the influence of Lutheranism and of 
Zwinglianism, began to preach evangelical sermons at 
St. Mauritz Church, near Munster. Despite the opposi- 
tion of magistrates and clergy the Munster people 
thronged his ministry. He was suspended for a year in 
order that he might go to Cologne for further studies or 
for the correction of his errors. He seems to have spent 
his year in becoming more deeply imbued with evangeli- 
cal teaching and returned to his work in 1 531 to labor for 
reform. 

While it was the working people that were chiefly at- 
tracted by his ministry, a number of influential citizens, 
magistrates among them, soon appeared among his sup- 



278 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

porters. Seeing his way clear to carry out a measure of 
evangelical reform, he made a visit to Wittenberg to con- 
fer with Luther and his associates. Returning in July he 
assumed a still more aggressive attitude and met with 
ever-increasing popular favor. 

When the bishop inhibited his preaching and attempted 
to banish him from the diocese, instead of going into 
banishment he took up his abode in the city, where he 
had a large following. 

The social democracy of the city which had since the 
suppression of the peasant uprising remained compara- 
tively quiet, had at its head Bernard Knipperdollinck, a 
man of ability and standing, who is said to have come in 
contact with Melchior Rinck some time before and who 
was no doubt already in sympathy with the social-demo- 
cratic, if not with the mystico-religious and chiliastic 
views of Munzer. An alliance was formed between the 
radical Lutheran element and the social democracy. 
Rothmann appeared in 1532 as the enthusiastic advocate 
of the rights of the common man and the opponent of 
the privileged classes. 

He resumed his preaching in February, 1532, in the 
court of St. Lambert Church. A few days later he se- 
cured the use of the church itself, while the foremost 
guild of the city accorded to him the use of the guild- 
house as a dwelling. 

Bishop Frederick was powerless to interfere with the 
progress of the popular evangelical movement, which was 
by this time strongly represented on the council. The 
retirement of Frederick and the succession of Erich as 
prince-bishop (March 27, 1532), checked for a time the 
progress of the radical party, inasmuch as the moderate 
evangelicals looked upon him as evangelically disposed 
and hoped that he would carry forward the work of re- 
form in a safe and legal manner. 



EXPULSION OF THE BISHOP 279 

Rothmann was ordered by the council, with the ap- 
proval of the heads of the guilds, to suspend his preach- 
ing. Supported by the masses he refused to obey. 

The death of Bishop. Erich in May and the succession 
of Count Franz von Waldeck in June put an end to hopes 
for reform through the constituted authorities. Count 
von Waldeck was not only notoriously immoral and irre- 
ligious, but his political connections were such as would 
certainly prevent him from showing any sympathy with 
evangelical teaching. An attempt on his part to execute 
a mandate of Charles V. for the immediate removal of 
all anti-Catholic preachers and the punishment of all dis- 
turbers of the existing order brought him into sharp col- 
lision with the municipal authorities, who declared their 
determination with property and life to maintain the 
preaching of the gospel. Attempting to enforce obedi- 
ence, the bishop was driven from the city and its neigh- 
borhood and many of his aristocratic supporters were im- 
prisoned. This occurred December 26, 1532. The bishop 
appealed to the neighboring Catholic princes, while the 
evangelical citizens of Miinster received promises of sup- 
port from the Landgrave Philip of Hesse and Duke Ernst 
of Liineburg. 

Peace was made in February, 1533, on terms highly 
advantageous to the evangelicals. The success of the 
evangelical movement aroused the wildest enthusiasm 
not only in the city and diocese, but throughout the lower 
Rhenish regions. Under Rothmann's direction the coun- 
cil adopted a scheme of church order in accordance with 
which the choice of pastors was to be left to each con- 
gregation. The monasteries were closed. The Catholic 
priests, deprived of popular support and of the means of 
livelihood, were obliged to leave the city. Arrangements 
were made for evangelical education, general and theo- 
logical, and for the care of the poor. 



280 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

A similar evangelical movement had for some time 
been going forward in the lower Rhenish provinces, espe- 
cially in the Cleve-Jiilich duchy. In the summer of 1532 
the Glevish authorities banished the evangelical leaders. 
These had figured as Lutherans, but under the influence 
of the Hofmannite movement several of them seem al- 
ready to have reached Anti-pedobaptist views. The 
most noted of these was Heinrich Roll, an ex-monk from 
Haarlem. In 1532 he published a work on the Supper, in 
which he took substantially Zwinglian ground, but laid 
great stress on the spiritual communion of the believer 
with God. The work is remarkably free from violence 
and bitterness and takes a most charitable view even of 
the enemies and persecutors of the truth, who persecute 
because they know no better. " If they knew the flesh 
and blood of the true body of Christ, they would rather 
die than revile that which they now revile." 

Roll appeared in Munster in the summer of 1532. 
One after another nearly all his fellow-laborers fol- 
lowed. Among them were Dionysius Vinne, Johann 
Klopriss, Hermann Staprade, and Henry Schlactscaef. 
Several of these were to play prominent parts in the 
Munster upheaval that was soon to follow. 

Roll became an avowed advocate of believers' baptism 
soon after his arrival in Munster. Under his influence 
Rothmann took the same position in May, 1533. Roth- 
mann had by this time attained to a commanding influ- 
ence. He had married the widow of a syndic, had the 
full support of the council and the guilds, and could 
readily have carried out any but the most radical scheme 
of reform. 

When Rothmann declared himself against infant bap- 
tism, his Lutheran friends remonstrated with him and 
begged him to desist from the agitation of such questions. 
This proving ineffective, the council summoned him and 



ROLL AND ROTHMANN 28 1 

his Anti-pedobaptist followers and commanded him to 
avoid such revolutionary teaching. But he had become 
too completely mastered by his views on baptism to be 
able long to hold the matter in abeyance. He was soon 
preaching against infant baptism more violently than 
ever. He insisted that in matters of faith the assembled 
church and not the magistracy has authority. Staprade, 
now a pronounced Anti-pedobaptist, was soon afterward 
called by the congregation of St. Lambert to be Roth- 
mann's assistant. Staprade was the first in Miinster 
publicly to declare infant baptism an abomination in 
the sight of God. 

The syndic van der Wieck exerted himself to the ut- 
most to save the city from the domination of the Anti- 
pedobaptists. Failing in other measures, he arranged a 
disputation for August 8, 1533, in which the celebrated 
Humanist van dem Busche was the chief Pedobaptist 
spokesman, and in which Rothmann represented the 
Anti-pedobaptist party. Rothmann quietly allowed his 
opponents to state their position, and then in a speech of 
over an hour presented the arguments against infant bap- 
tism with great fullness and clearness. So profound was 
the impression he made that no one of his opponents was 
willing to undertake a refutation of his arguments. 

Notwithstanding the advantage that the Anti-pedobap- 
tist party had gained in the disputation, the council under- 
took to compel Rothmann, Roll, Klopriss, Vinne, Stralen, 
and Staprade, all of whom were now ardent rejecters of 
infant baptism, to resume the administration of the rite. 
Two members of the council required Staprade to ad- 
minister baptism to their own infants. On his refusal he 
was banished. The alternative was given to the other 
five to administer baptism to infants or go into banish- 
ment. They replied that they must obey God rather 
than men, and were willing with goods and life to defend 



282 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

the truth. They insisted that jurisdiction in matters of 
doctrine belongs not to the council but to the churches. 
If the council has anything against them, it should bring 
the charges before the assembly of believers to be dealt 
with. They warn the council most earnestly against 
incurring the Divine judgment by interfering with the 
ministers in their proclamation of the truth. 
. The council proceeded to order the closing of the 
churches of the disobedient ministers and to depose Roth- 
mann. A great popular demonstration secured for Roth- 
mann the right to preach in another church, on condition 
that he should be silent on the matters in dispute. He 
promised to conform to the requirement until such time 
as the matter should have been made clear and the Lord 
should have given further intimation as to his will. 

Thus far there had been nothing fanatical in the con- 
duct of the Anti-pedobaptist cause in Miinster. There 
was much disorderly excitement among the evangelicals 
in their struggle with the Roman Catholic authorities and 
considerable iconoclasm ; but among the Anti-pedobap- 
tists as such we see only a firm resolve to follow the dic- 
tates of conscience and to restore Christianity to the 
form in which it was given by Christ and his apostles. 

In a " Confession on the Two Sacraments," published 
by Rothmann, Klopriss, Staprade, Vinne, and Stralen, 
November 8, 1533, we have the following definition: 

Baptism is an immersion in water, which the candidate desires 
and receives for a true sign that he has died to sins, being buried 
with Christ, has been thereby raised into a new life, henceforth to 
walk not in the lusts of the flesh but in obedience to the will ot 
God. . . In this [obedience to the will of God] is blessedness placed 
and this it is also that is required in baptism. . . Those who are 
baptized thereby confess their faith, and in the power of faith are 
inclined to put off the entire old man and henceforth to walk in new- 
ness of life. . . Accordingly baptism is a gate or entrance into the 
holy church and a putting on of Jesus Christ. 



LITERATURE 283 

They regarded the baptism of unintelligent, will-less, 
and speechless children, as an abominable perversion and 
as "the source of the desolation and of the complete 
apostasy of the holy church." 

In an earlier paragraph "water sprinkling " is given a 
place in the definition of baptism side by side with im- 
mersion. 

Literature: Bouterwek, Cornelius (" Miinst. Aufr."), Hochhut. 
Erbkam, Gbbel, and Schauenburg, as in the Bibliography. 



CHAPTER XXII 
THE MUNSTER KINGDOM 

WE left Melchior Hofmann in prison at Strasburg 
patiently awaiting the divine trumpet blast that 
should usher in the new dispensation. His disciples in 
the Netherlands, Westphalia, and the provinces of the 
lower Rhine, had been laboring with great secrecy but 
with remarkable enthusiasm in the full expectation that 
the new age would be ushered in according to his pre- 
diction in 1533. Baptism had been suspended for two 
years at Hofmann's command in order that the propa- 
ganda might be the more secret and effective. 

Jan Matthys, a Haarlem baker, had come to the front 
as under Hofmann the inspired leader of the party. In 
Matthys we see a wholly different spirit from that which 
animated Hofmann. With all his extravagancies Hofmann 
never abandoned the great fundamental truths of Chris- 
tianity. God continued with him to be a God of love. 
While he uttered some bitter words against his opponents, 
he seems never to have been dominated by the spirit of 
hatred. He expected the godless to be destroyed, but 
he never reached the point of commanding believers to 
take up the sword of Gideon and to slaughter them. 

In Matthys we see the spirit of the Taborites and of 
Thomas Miinzer revived, and that in an intensified form. 
Munzer was too much of a scholar and had been too 
much under the influence of evangelical mysticism to be 
as utterly fanatical as Matthys became. He seems to 
have been consumed with hatred of the upper classes, 
whom he regarded as the oppressors and persecutors of 
the poor people of God. God to him was in relation to 
284 



JAN MATTHYS 285 

the ungodly a God of vengeance. The dealing of Jeho- 
vah with the Canaanites was the basis of his idea of 
the way in which the new dispensation was to be estab- 
lished. Christians are to take up arms and to blot out 
the ungodly from the face of the earth. 

Weary of waiting for the promised inauguration of the 
new age at Strasburg, he proclaimed himself a prophet 
of God, nay the prophet Enoch who, according to Hof- 
mann's scheme, was to appear just before the great event. 
It was revealed to him that baptism should be resumed. 
Near the end of 1533 he sent forth a number of his faith- 
ful followers two by two to visit the Hofmannite congre- 
gations and to inform them that the promised Enoch had 
appeared and that baptism was to be resumed as a prepa- 
ration for the great event. 

They seem to have been generally successful in arous- 
ing enthusiasm. Not only were vast numbers of the 
working classes baptized in the communities where con- 
gregations had already been established, but a rapid 
propaganda was carried forward by those who had al- 
ready accepted Anti-pedobaptist views throughout the 
cities and villages of the Netherlands and neighboring 
countries. The social democracy seem to have been 
everywhere ready to receive the new gospel, so agree- 
able was it to their aspirations after freedom and abun- 
dance. In an incredibly short time many thousands must 
have been introduced into the covenant by baptism and 
have committed themselves to the carrying out of the 
great revolution that Matthys had planned. 

The news of the overthrow of Roman Catholicism in 
Munster and of the rapid growth of the Anti-pedobaptist 
cause soon reached the Netherlands and all the regions 
in which Hofmannite communities had been planted. As 
a result multitudes from these regions flocked to Munster, 
where they hoped to find protection and succor. 



286 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

On December 8, Jan Schroder, one of Rothmann's 
disciples, publicly discussed in the court of St. Lambert's 
Church the points at issue between the council and the 
Anti-p'edobaptists. The council having threatened to 
withdraw the protection that had been conditionally ac- 
corded to Rothmann, he replied that he had no need of 
its protection ; God and his people would protect him. 

Rothmann resumed preaching on disputed points on 
December 14. Schroder was imprisoned on December 
1 5 . The next day the whole of the smith guild, to which 
Schroder belonged, besieged the council house and de- 
manded his release. The magistrates were obliged to 
yield, and the released prisoner was borne in triumph 
through the streets. The Anti-pedobaptist party, thus 
combined with the social democracy, was now conscious 
of its power and became bold and aggressive. 

About January 5, 1534, two missionaries from Matthys 
reached Munster and made known to the Anti-pedobap- 
tist leaders that Enoch had appeared in the person of 
Matthys, that the millennial kingdom was at hand, and 
that the baptized and redeemed should henceforth under 
the dominion of Christ lead a blessed life, with commu- 
nity of goods, without law, without magistracy, and 
without marriage. Baptism was at once to be resumed. 
Rothmann, Roll, Vinne, and Stralen were baptized, and 
through them during the next eight days fourteen hun- 
dred submitted to the ordinance and were thus prepared 
to take part in the new regime. 1 

Those who were baptized renounced the wickedness 
and the heathen ways of the world, and promised in all 
fidelity to fulfill the will of Christ. Brotherly love, com- 

1 Notwithstanding the definition of baptism as immersion, quoted in the last chap- 
ter, the authors of the definition seem not to have been immersed themselves or to 
have practised immersion. According to the evidence of eye-witnesses, the method 
of baptizing that prevailed in Munster was the pouring of three handfuls of water 
on the kneeling candidate. See Cornelius, " Augenzengen," p. 20. 



JOHN OF LEYDEN 287 

munity of goods, the renunciation of rents and interest, 
the cancellation of notes, mortgages, etc., and the aban- 
donment of extravagance and display in dress, were 
among the features of the new kingdom. No commun- 
ion was to be had with the godless. Unbelievers were 
not to be admitted to their religious meetings. 

These first emissaries from Matthys seem not to have 
fully expounded the means by which the kingdom was 
to be set up. The full revelation was soon to be made. 
On January 13 appeared two men who had been espe- 
cially commissioned by Matthys to remain in Miinster 
and to lead in the great work. These were John of Ley- 
den and Gert torn Kloster. The former was a highly 
gifted young man about five and twenty years of age. 
Of only a moderate education, he had learned the tailor's 
trade and had traveled widely as a journeyman. He had 
spent some time in England. He had come first under 
the influence of the teaching of Hofmann and latterly 
had been completely carried away by the enthusiasm of 
Matthys. 

Rothmann hesitated for a time to fall into line with the 
sanguinary programme of Matthys and John of Leyden, 
but he was overborne by the popular enthusiasm and 
soon accepted the leadership of the young fanatic. 

The city authorities were utterly powerless to stay 
the progress of this wild enthusiasm. Evangelicals and 
Catholics fled. The monasteries and religious houses of 
all kinds were seized and their inmates obliged either to 
leave the city or to be baptized. Many of them accepted 
the latter alternative and entered with great heartiness 
into the abominations that were to follow. The same 
alternative was presented to the citizens in general. 
John of Leyden and his followers soon had possession of 
the entire city with all its wealth. 

In February, 1534, persecution was renewed with 



288 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

great severity in Holland. Learning of the success of his 
emissaries in Miinster, Matthys reached the conclusion, 
by divine revelation as he claimed, that Miinster and not 
Strasburg was the new Jerusalem. Strasburg had failed 
of the honor because of its sins. He dispatched messen- 
gers in all directions to bear some such message as this 
to the faithful : 

Dear brethren, you are to journey to . There you are to be 

before midday. This must be. The 24th of March you must be 
there, before midday. See that no one selfishly remains behind, or 
vengeance will without fail overtake him. 

This message spread through the land like wildfire. 
The poor people had no intimation as to their destination 
or the object of their leaving their homes and their all. 
The command came to them as the voice of God himself, 
and they obeyed unquestioningly. They were met at 
the appointed places by Matthys' confidential agents and 
directed as to their further course. 

Thousands of the wretched, deluded people were seized 
in the principal ports of the Netherlands and many were 
cruelly executed. In some of the cities the fanatics at- 
tempted to gain control. There are cases recorded, prob- 
ably authentic, in which men and women ran naked 
through the streets proclaiming the vengeance of God. 
Thousands of Netherlanders and others reinforced the 
thousands of the inhabitants of Miinster who had been 
drawn into the fanaticism. 

Matthys himself was soon in Miinster, where he con- 
tinued to play the role of chief prophet. The city was 
now organized as a theocracy. Matthys secured the ap- 
pointment of seven deacons with absolute authority. An 
indignant citizen rebuked the leaders. Matthys con- 
demned him to death ; John of Leyden stabbed him, and 
Matthys finished the slaughter. Matthys is said to have 



FANATICISM RAMPANT 289 

proposed the slaughter of all the ungodly who remained 
in the city, but was opposed by Knipperdollinck, who 
knew full well that such a procedure would arouse the 
indignation of Christendom and prove destructive to the 
hopes of the theocracy. 

The bishop found great difficulty in securing the aid 
that was necessary for the suppression of the movement. 
The Protestant princes were not anxious to see the 
Roman Catholic dominance restored and the neighboring 
Catholic princes were not in a position to render imme- 
diate and adequate succor. Well equipped with arms 
and provisions and filled with fanatical zeal the Munster- 
ites were by no means easy to dislodge from their strong- 
hold. 

Messengers were sent out in all directions to proclaim 
the establishment of the new Jerusalem and to invite all 
the faithful to come to Munster and to participate freely 
in the good things which were there in abundance. It 
is in accordance with the principles of human nature 
that the needy and vicious classes should accept the in- 
vitation without much reference to their religious con- 
victions, and that they should readily accept a gospel 
that conveyed so immediate and material advantages. 

The city was soon besieged by the bishop's forces and 
such allies as he was able to secure, but for some months 
the siege was by no means complete, and the inhabitants 
of Munster were able to communicate somewhat freely 
with the outside world. 

In April Matthys went forth with a small band under 
supposed Divine guidance to attack the besiegers, and 
after a desperate struggle was slain. 

To John of Leyden now belonged the undisputed su- 
premacy. He proceeded to organize the new Israel after 
the model of the old. Twelve elders were appointed 
with power of life and death. A new code of laws based 

T 



290 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

upon the Mosaic was promulgated. The elders were to 
sit in judgment twice each day. Knipperdollinck was 
made executioner. One of the provisions of the new 
code 'was that every one belonging to the new Israel 
shall unhesitatingly observe (that is, abstain from or 
obey) whatever Scripture either forbids or commands. 
This ordinance undoubtedly had chief reference to the 
Old Testament, and the design of it apparently was to 
give place to polygamy. Rothmann and the rest of the 
preachers soon began to preach polygamy with an effect 
upon the people that can be easily imagined. 

John's attention was drawn to a prophecy in accord- 
ance with which a king should arise in Israel who should 
have dominion over the whole earth. It was revealed to 
him that the promised king was none other than him- 
self. "God has chosen me to be king over the whole 
world. But I tell you, dear brethren, that I had rather 
feed swine or follow the plow than be king. Yet what I 
do I must do, for God has appointed me thereunto." 

Knipperdollinck, Rothmann, and the rest of the proph- 
ets, became the king's functionaries and counselors. As 
David had his harem, so John provided himself with 
wives at his pleasure and slew with his own hands such 
as displeased him. Old marriage relations were com- 
pletely ignored. Women were in many cases forced to 
unite with men who felt it a sacred duty to have a plu- 
rality of wives. It was truly a reign of terror, in which 
the wildest license on the one hand and the most abso- 
lute despotism on the other prevailed. 

In December, 1534, the leaders of the theocracy pub- 
lished "The Book of Vengeance,'' the aim of which was 
to vindicate and glorify the kingdom of God in Miinster. 
It is addressed to the "true Israelites and members of 
the covenant in Christ Jesus, all and each," and seeks 
to show by copious quotations from the Old and New 



THE FALL OF MUNSTER 291 

Testaments that the promised kingdom has been set up, 
and that the day of wrath for the ungodly is at hand. 1 

For more than a year the wretched fanatics were able 
to resist the bishop and his troops. The scenes enacted 
during this year are indescribable. Rebellion was sup- 
pressed in the most summary manner. There was not 
the slightest regard for the sacredness of human life and 
the leaders reveled in blood. 

Toward the end of the period the blockade was made 
complete and provisions grew scarce. The last few 
months were a time of fearful suffering. Knowing full 
well that massacre would follow conquest the besieged 
held out as long as possible. The scene ended in a hor- 
rible massacre and in the most revolting torturing of the 
leaders. 

The massacre was not confined to Miinster, but ex- 
tended over the whole territory that had been affected 
by the movement. Multitudes of those who were sym- 
pathetic with the aims of the new Jerusalem had been 
destroyed before the fall of Miinster. Throughout nearly 
the whole of Europe the persecution of Anti-pedobaptists 
in general was greatly intensified. 

Philip of Hesse, as before remarked, was the only 
prince in Western Europe who still ventured to discrimi- 
nate between wild fanatics and those who quietly op- 
posed infant baptism and sought by purely spiritual 
means to restore Christianity to its primitive position. 

Princes and religious leaders who from the beginning 
had considered the Anti-pedobaptist movement fraught 
with danger and had felt compelled to persecute it, saw in 
the Miinster episode a justification for their fears and 
their severity, and some of those who had sought to 
exercise moderation felt that their leniency had been ill 
bestowed. 

1 "Das Biichlein von der Rache" is reprinted in full by Bouterwek, p. 66, seq. 



292 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

The Miinster Kingdom was regarded for centuries as a 
great object-lesson, showing the natural working out of 
the principles involved in the Anti-pedobaptist position. 
If afl Anti-pedobaptists were not so atrocious as Matthys, 
John of Leyden, and Knipperdollinck, it was because all 
did not have the same opportunity to exhibit themselves 
in their true character. If some taught and practised 
absolute non-resistance and abstinence from the use of 
the sword, this was supposed to be a shrewd device on 
their part for escaping persecution and for avoiding the 
burdens of citizenship. 

In England and in America the opponents of the Bap- 
tist movement long persisted in holding up the Miinster 
Kingdom as a sample of what might be expected should 
its advocates be allowed to grow strong enough to show 
their colors. No episode in history has done so much to 
impede the progress of Baptist principles as that of Miin- 
ster. Its influence is still quite marked in Germany and 
other European countries. 

What then are the lessons of this frightful episode ? 
Where rests the responsibility for the Miinster Kingdom ? 
Primarily it rests with the oppressors of the working 
classes, or rather with the institutions that made such 
oppression possible. This grinding oppression had be- 
come intolerable long before the Reformation time and 
fanatical leaders had frequently appeared with visionary 
schemes for the emancipation of the oppressed. The 
early reformatory utterances of Luther and others had 
aroused anew the hopes of the common man. The wide 
diffusion of the Scriptures and of evangelical teaching 
had convinced the people that the treatment they were 
receiving was unjust and unchristian. The violent 
suppression of the great peasant uprising had not de- 
stroyed the seeds of discontent. In fact it had been 
increased by the atrocities committed. 



RATIONALE OF THE MOVEMENT 293 

But the immediate cause of the particular form of revo- 
lution that found its culmination in the Munster Kingdom 
was chiliasm, combined as it always is in times of social 
and religious fermentation, with prophetical mysticism. 
The prophetico-mystical chiliasm of Nicholas Storch and 
Thomas Munzer was perpetuated by Hans Hut, Melchior 
Rinck, and Melchior Hofmann. The unrelenting perse- 
cution to which Anti-pedobaptists were nearly everywhere 
subjected and the utter hopelessness of their cause from 
a human point of view put the people in such a state of 
desperation that they were ready to listen to any one 
who, claiming to be divinely illuminated, proclaimed to 
them that in fulfillment of prophetical Scriptures a new 
era was about to be inaugurated in which the cruel per- 
secutors of the people of God should be destroyed, in 
which magistracy, that seemed to them to stand so much 
in the way of the prosperity of the cause of Christ, 
should be abolished, and in which the people of God 
should live a glorious and blessed life in the full enjoy- 
ment of the liberty and equality that they despaired of 
ever receiving under existing conditions. 

Hofmann taught obedience to the magistracy, but en- 
couraged the expectation of the speedy inauguration of 
the glorious kingdom of Christ through direct Divine 
agency. It was but a step farther to the position of 
Matthys, that God would have his people destroy the un- 
godly and set up a kingdom of righteousness, as under 
the Old Testament dispensation, by their own right arms. 
The more revolting features of the Munster Kingdom fol- 
lowed naturally from the position that Matthys had taken. 
Fanaticism once in power knows no bounds, and if the 
Old Testament system is a model in some respects, why 
not in all ? 

It should be observed that only a portion of the great 
Anabaptist party was involved in chiliastic heresy, and 



294 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

that a large element of the party was wholly free from 
complicity or sympathy with the Miinster uproar. 

Literature : Cornelius, Keller, Dorpius, Hast, Erbkam, De Bussiere, 
Rhegius, Kerssenbroick, Kielstra, Bouterwek, Pearson, and Roth- 
mann, as in the Bibliography. 



CHAPTER XXIII 
MENNO SIMONS AND THE QUIET ANTI-PEDOBAPTISTS 

IT is certain that there were Anti-pedobaptists in the 
Netherlands before the advent of Melchior Hofmann. 
It is equally certain that Hofmann's type of teaching 
became so far the prevailing type that for a number of 
years there is no record of any Anti-pedobaptist oppo- 
sition. The enthusiasm of the Hofmannite movement 
seems to have drawn to itself all the social-democratic 
and radical-religious elements. It would be going too far 
to say that from 1528 to 1534 there were in the Nether- 
lands no Anti-pedobaptists who were free from the ex- 
travagant chiliasm of Hofmann ; but if such there were 
they seem not to have lifted up their voices in protest. 

When Jan Matthys went beyond Hofmann and claimed 
to have received a divine intimation that the time had 
come for believers to take up the sword and smite the 
ungodly, there was some not very effective protesting ; 
but the great mass of Anti-pedobaptists were swept irre- 
sistibly into the maelstrom of chiliastic fanaticism. That 
a considerable number refused to follow blindly the pro- 
phetic guidance of Matthys there can be no doubt. In the 
very nature of things the names and numbers of those 
who held back would for the most part escape publicity. 
Many who were for a time involved in the current fanati- 
cism were cured of their chiliasm by the course of events. 

Among the most noteworthy of those who refused to 
follow the lead of Jan Matthys were Dirk and Obbe 
Philips and Leonard Bouwens, of Emden in East Fries- 
land. It was at Emden, as will be remembered, that 
Hofmann began his labors in the Netherlands. Here more 

295 



296 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

than elsewhere Anti-pedobaptists and evangelicals in 
general had enjoyed partial toleration. It was probably 
due to the degree of toleration enjoyed by the Anti-pedo- 
baptists of this region that so large a proportion of them 
were able, notwithstanding the chiliastic teaching to 
which they were subjected, to withhold themselves from 
fanaticism. 

Menno Simons, who was to gather out of the wreck 
caused by the outburst of chiliastic fanaticism of 1 534— 
35 the sound evangelical elements and to carry forward 
along old-evangelical lines the work of restoring primi- 
tive Christianity, was born at Witmarsum, in West Fries- 
land, about 1492. He was educated for the priesthood 
and entered upon his duties as parish priest in the neigh- 
boring village of Pingjum about 15 19. 

According to his own account, he had at this time little 
or no knowledge of the Bible and was entirely devoid of 
right religious convictions and motives. He performed 
the duties of his office in a purely perfunctory manner 
and lived a life of self-indulgence. 

In the third year of his incumbency, while he was on 
one occasion administering mass, the thought came to 
him with irresistible force that the elements he was hand- 
ling could not be the body and blood of Christ. He at 
first attributed this mental disturbance to the devil, 
sighed, prayed, and confessed ; but his skepticism held 
its ground. It is probable that he was already to some 
extent familiar with the Protestant agitation, and his 
doubts may have been due to this source. 

Once led to question the correctness of the traditional 
system, he could not resist the impulse to investigate the 
new teachings that were causing such a stir in the relig- 
ious world. He began reading assiduously the writings 
of Luther and other evangelical teachers. There is evi- 
dence that from 1523 onward the writings of many of the 



MENNO'S CONVERSION 297 

German and Swiss Reformers were extensively circulated 
in the Netherlands. 

Like most of the religious thinkers of the time, he was 
soon brought face to face with the question of infant bap- 
tism. He had been taught as a Catholic that by means 
of baptism infants are washed of original sin. He tested 
this view by Scripture and decided that it was against the 
blood of Christ. Afterward he went to Luther, who 
taught him that infants should be baptized upon their 
own faith. This also, he saw, was not in accord with 
God's word. In the third place he went to Bucer, who 
taught him that infants should be baptized in order that 
the obligation to bring them up in the way of the Lord 
might be more carefully observed. This theory also he 
found without scriptural basis. In the fourth place he 
went to Bullinger, who claimed that infant baptism was a 
sign of the new covenant as circumcision was of the old. 
This view also failed to satisfy him. He was impressed 
with the fact that these views were mutually contradic- 
tory and that not one of them had a scriptural foundation. 

Instead of abandoning at once the church of whose 
falseness he had become convinced, he remained for a 
long time in his priestly office and even received promo- 
tion to a position in his native town. His convictions had 
not yet become overmastering, and he was still content 
perfunctorily to fulfill the requirements of his position 
and to spend his time in a profound study of the questions 
that were agitating the religious world. 

In 1533 persecution drove a number of Anti-pedobap- 
tists from Flanders to West Friesland. The martyrdom 
of one of these, Sicke Frierichs by name, made a pro- 
found impression on Menno's mind ; but he still hesitated 
to take the decisive step and to subject himself to the 
operation of the terrible imperial edicts that were being 
so ruthlessly executed. 



298 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

The fanatical movement culminating in the Munster 
Kingdom (1534-35) soon followed and brought such 
shame_ to the Anti-pedobaptist name that he felt con- 
strained still to hold his convictions in abeyance. 

It is probable that as early as 1534 Menno entered 
secretly into relations with the Anti-pedobaptists, while 
still maintaining publicly his position as priest. However 
this may be, he attempted in vain to dissuade members 
of the fanatical party from carrying into effect their 
ruinous programme. But the spirit of vengeance in the 
name of God had taken too firm a hold on their natures 
to be dislodged by such argument as he was able to 
adduce. 

In February, 1535, a body of these fanatics numbering 
three hundred men with women and children had en- 
trenched themselves in a monastery in the neighborhood 
of his home. Most of them fell in the conflict, and of 
those who were taken captive nearly all were executed. 
Among those who were slain was Menno's own brother. 
This event aroused Menno's conscience as nothing else 
had done. 

I thought within myself, wretched man that I am, what do I 
remaining in this position and not confirming by my life the word 
of the Lord and the knowledge that I have received? If I do not lead 
the ignorant, misguided sheep who are so anxious to do what is 
right, as much as in me lies, to the true fold of Christ, how then 
will the blood shed in error rise up against me in the judgment of 
Almighty God? My heart trembled in my body at this contempla- 
tion of myself. I implored God for grace and the pardon of my 
transgressions, and besought the Almighty that he would create 
in me a pure heart, that he would endow me with frankness and 
manly power in order that I might preach his unfalsified word. 

His prayer was answered. Immediately he conferred 
not with flesh and blood, and his subsequent life was one 
of single-minded devotion to what he believed to be 
God's truth. Few men in all history have approached 



CHARACTER OF MENNO'S TEACHING 299 

nearer to the life of the great apostle to the Gentiles than 
did Menno Simons. First of all, he began to preach and 
write with all earnestness against John of Leyden and 
the Miinster Kingdom, denouncing the leaders as false 
prophets. 

In 1536 he openly renounced the Roman Catholic 
Church. How he spent the following year we do not 
know; but we see him in 1537, after much hesitation 
on account of distrust of his ability to lead the Anti- 
pedobaptist cause in such trying times, yielding to the 
earnest entreaty of a deputation of quiet Anti-pedobaptists 
that he should come forward and assume the leadership 
of the shepherdless flock, "who in obedience to Christ 
stood ready to lead a life in the fear of God, who served 
their neighbors in love, willingly bore their cross, sought 
the welfare and safety of all men, loved righteousness 
and truth, and fled from unrighteousness." 

He now began to write in defense of his position. On 
baptism and the Supper his views were in accord with 
those we have met in the great Anti-pedobaptist move- 
ment of the earlier time. As regards oaths, magistracy, 
warfare, and capital punishment, he was in agreement 
with the evangelical parties of the Middle Ages and with 
the great majority of the Anti-pedobaptists with whom 
we have already become acquainted. 

In view of the terrible disaster that had come upon the 
Anti-pedobaptist cause through the chiliastic fanaticism 
of Matthys and John of Leyden, he laid special stress, as 
did the Waldenses of old, on the duty of Christians to 
resist not evil under any circumstances. He exalted the 
doctrine of the new life in Christ, agreeing with the rest 
of the Anti-pedobaptists of the time in repudiating the 
Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone and 
insisting on the imitation of Christ in his life of utter 
self-abnegation. 



300 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

As with the old-evangelical party in general the 
Sermon on the Mount was, in Menno's view, funda- 
mental. 

We must be born from above and transposed out of the evil nature 
of Adam into the good way of Christ, from which a new life follows. 
The poor, ignorant people are vainly consoled through external 
works and exercises. Let each one be warned no longer to trust in 
the fact that he is a baptized Christian, nor upon the long usage of 
the times, nor upon papal decrees, nor upon imperial edicts, nor upon 
the wit of the learned, nor upon human counsels and wisdom. 

He defies lords, popes, cardinals, and bishops to prove 
with a single word of Scripture "that a perverse, carnally 
minded man, without the new birth from God's Spirit, 
has been saved or can be saved merely because he 
vaunts his faith in Christ, or hears mass, or goes to 
church, or makes pilgrimages." "For us," he says, "a 
counsel has been made in heaven, to which alone we 
listen and which alone we must follow. This counsel 
stands, — it stands, I tell you, — and the gates of hell shall 
never prevail against it." 

He published soon afterward a strongly polemical 
work against the corruptions of the Roman Catholic 
Church, entitled "The Contradictions of Babylon," and 
various apologetical works, in which he sought to induce 
the authorities to distinguish between the wild fanatics 
of Miinster and the quiet, non-resisting, benevolent people 
with whom he had identified himself. 

The authorities were soon seeking his life and offering 
a reward for his arrest With great caution he had been 
able to labor in West Friesland until 1542. In the city 
of Groningen he found a comparatively safe retreat owing 
to the tolerant disposition of Duke Charles of Gelders, 
who ruled the city. The bishop of Utrecht was also 
inclined to toleration. Yet even here Menno and his 
more prominent associates felt themselves unsafe after a 



PHILIPS AND BOUWENS $01 

time and betook themselves to East Friesland, where the 
Countess Anna, regent of the province, had long been 
known as the friend and protector of evangelical Chris- 
tians. 

While from 1530 onward it had not been possible 
wholly to avoid persecution of the Anti-pedobaptists, so 
vigorously pressed throughout the empire, it was never 
carried to the cruel extreme here as in most other regions. 
The countess had entrusted the direction of religious 
affairs to the noted reformer John a Lasco, a Polish 
nobleman and ex-priest, who was far more liberal in his 
attitude toward the Anti-pedobaptists than were most of 
the Protestant leaders. After the suppression of the 
Munster Kingdom, East Friesland became a refuge for 
the persecuted from the rest of the Netherlands, Switzer- 
land, France, and England. Here were to be found about 
1543 the quiet, non-resisting followers of Dirk Philips, 
the disciples of Battenburg, the leader of the Dutch 
Miinsterites, and those of David Joris, the pantheistic 
Anti-pedobaptist leader. The Countess Anna and John 
a Lasco, like Philip of Hesse, and unlike most rulers and 
theologians, Protestant and Catholic, recognized the 
distinction between the quiet Anti-pedobaptists and the 
chiliastic fanatics. 

It is probable that Menno had already established rela- 
tions with Dirk and Obbe Philips and Leonard Bouwens 
before his removal to East Friesland. At any rate, soon 
after his arrival at Emden we find him closely associated 
with these leaders, whose followers were somewhat 
numerous in Emden and its vicinity. At Leer and Nor- 
den and in many villages and country places communi- 
ties of quiet Anabaptists are known to have existed at 
this time. 

Thus Menno is to be regarded as in no sense the origi- 
nator of the religious denomination that bears his name, 



302 A HISTORY OF ANT1-PEDOBAPTISM 

but rather as the organizer and leader of a people already 
somewhat numerous and only waiting for a master spirit 
to lead them out into aggressive and fruitful work. 

Unfortunately, as it seems to us, Menno had adopted, 
along with the sounder elements common to the old- 
evangelical party and to the Anti-pedobaptists, Melchior 
Hofmann's view of the incarnation, involving denial of 
the true humanity of Christ. Upon this dogma he laid 
the utmost stress, and he spent in its defense a vast 
amount of time that might have been far better employed. 
At the same time he needlessly aroused much antago- 
nism by advocating a view that seemed to the great 
majority of evangelical Christians out of harmony with 
Scripture teaching and with the great doctrines of grace. 
It may be said that this view has been abandoned by the 
majority of Menno's own followers. Undoubtedly it was 
a hurtful excrescence on Menno's system. 

He soon became involved in controversy with John a 
Lasco on the incarnation, the two natures of Christ, 
hereditary sin, sanctification, the Christian ministry, etc. 
John a Lasco proposed a public disputation, to which 
Menno readily agreed. It was held in January, 1543, 
and lasted for three or four days. As usual, both parties 
claimed the victory and each leader published in defense 
of his position. 

Menno's first work growing out of this controversy 
was on the incarnation, his second on church polity, and 
his third on baptism. 1 In the last he set forth clearly the 

1 It seems almost certain that Menno did not require or practise immersion. In his 
'" Foundation Book" (p. 22, folio Dutch edition of his works) he refers to the act of 
baptism as receiving " a handful of water." The passage in his treatise on " Chris- 
tian Baptism " (p. 409) sometimes supposed to assert the exclusive validity of immer- 
sion, cannot possibly be so interpreted. The author is simply insisting upon be- 
lievers' baptism as "the only baptism in the water that is well pleasing to God" to 
the exclusion of infant baptism. Yet in this same treatise he speaks repeatedly of 
" baptizing in the water " and of baptism as " a water-bath," and he does not hesitate 
to employ the symbolism of burial and resurrection in connection with the ordinance. 
On p. 419 he repudiates the idea of the "miserable world" (referring to his Pedo- 



MENNO IN COLOGNE 303 

grounds on which he felt himself justified in continuing 
to strive for the restoration of primitive Christianity, 
rather than co-operate with evangelical bodies that re- 
tained infant baptism and maintained unjustifiable rela- 
tions to the civil powers. 

Like most of the polemical writing of the time, Menno's 
would have been improved by the introduction of more 
"sweetness and light." His influence was doubtless 
lessened by the irritation that he must have caused by 
the sharpness of some of his utterances. His denuncia- 
tions of a salaried ministry were particularly odious to 
those who felt themselves justified in living by the 
gospel. Undoubtedly Menno's attitude of pronounced 
hostility to a regularly educated and paid ministry and 
the acceptance of this view by his followers, while it 
may have attracted the illiterate of his time, was a source 
of permanent weakness to his denomination. This came 
to be felt after a while by his followers and efforts were 
made to overcome it. 

Before the close of 1543 we find Menno in Cologne, 
where the Archbishop-Elector Hermann von Wied had 
adopted Protestantism and had just introduced a plan 
of reformation under the advice of Melancthon and 
Bucer. Here Menno labored quietly, but apparently with 
large results, for two years. It is probable that during 
this time he visited many other places and that through 
correspondence and otherwise he was encouraging and 
directing the work in the Netherlands and throughout the 
Rhenish regions of Germany. 

A large community of Anti-pedobaptists in sympathy 
with Menno's views was already in Cologne and its 
neighborhood. Here also Menno proposed to hold a pub- 
baptist opponents, Catholic and Protestant) that " a plunging (duycken) in the water" 
is equivalent to "the new birth." While perfectly familiar with immersion as the 
primitive form of baptism he was probably content with affusion, the practice of the 
later Mennonites as well. 



304 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

lie disputation on the incarnation and other points of doc- 
trine on which he was at variance with the evangelical 
ministers. The theologians of Bonn and Wesel would 
have accepted his proposal, but were influenced by John 
a Lasco to decline. 

By 1546 the Catholics had secured the deposition of 
Hermann von Wied and had regained ecclesiastical con- 
trol in Cologne and its dependencies. Menno, with his 
sick wife, was obliged to seek elsewhere a retreat and a 
center for his evangelistic activity. 

For the next nine years Wismar afforded him a home 
and the East Sea region was the chief field of his labors. 
He continued to publish largely in defense of his views 
and was engaged in several controversies with prominent 
theologians during this period. The most noteworthy of 
these were with John a Lasco, Gellius Faber, and Martin 
Micronius. 

In 1547 he made a visit to Emden for the purpose of 
conferring with Obbe and Dirk Philips, Gillis of Aachen, 
Henry of Vrenen, Antony of Cologne, and Leonard 
Bouwens, with reference to the future work of the de- 
nomination. These were all general evangelists (head- 
elders or bishops), and had been for some years engaged 
in a wonderfully successful evangelistic work. Besides 
these, there were two brethren present who were out of 
harmony with the rest on fundamental points : Adam 
Pastor, who was inclined to anti-trinitarianism, and 
Francis Cuyper, who was too much disposed toward 
Roman Catholic views. 

The chief questions discussed at this conference were 
those regarding the incarnation of Christ and the exer- 
cise of the ban. On the latter point a serious difference 
of opinion that finally led to a division of the body ap- 
peared. Menno, Dirk Philips, Gillis of Aachen, and 
Bouwens, agreed in insisting on the most rigorous applica- 



EXCESSIVE DISCIPLINE 305 

tion of discipline, the rest contended for more of modera- 
tion. The specific question on which division occurred 
was with reference to marital avoidance. Menno con- 
tended that the believing husband or wife of a church- 
member excluded for improper conduct should refuse to 
cohabit with the excluded party. Here again Menno 
seems to us to have spent his strength in vain. From 
this time onward a large part of his time was consumed 
in advocating this extreme view, and the attempt to en- 
force it was the cause of endless trouble in the churches 
as well as of a schism in the connection. 

Menno saw all the greater reason for the use of rigor 
in the application of the ban from the fact that Mun- 
sterites were seeking to gain entrance into the churches 
and that the good name of the connection depended on 
their rigorous exclusion. 

" 1 know of a surety," he wrote in a circular letter after his return 
to Wismar, " that if we had not used our utmost endeavor by means 
of the ban to keep clear of the adherents of the Munster fanatics, 
we should not now be so free from the abominations of the perverse 
sect, to which we can now bear witness before the whole world. 
Without the ban our churches would have stood open to all errorists, 
all scoffers and wanton sinners, while now the pure, clear light of 
the gospel in this time of anti-Christian abomination is revealed to 
us." 

If the question had been between discipline and no 
discipline, between the exclusion of unworthy members 
for sufficient cause with the guarded admission of appli- 
cants on the one hand, and the indiscriminate reception of 
all who might apply for membership with the toleration 
of open sin and heresy on the other, there would have 
been point in Menno's contention. It is possible 
that the opponents of Menno favored a degree of laxity 
that was unwholesome and that did not sufficiently guard 
the purity and the good name of the connection ; it is 



306 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

certain that Menno's position was rigorous in the extreme 
and it is probable that it occasioned more of scandal than 
it prevented. The marriage tie is too sacred a thing to 
be ruthlessly broken on account of misconduct that makes 
exclusion from church-membership proper, and it seems 
clear that the New Testament neither requires nor per- 
mits such avoidance as Menno required. 

Soon after the division mentioned above, Obbe Philips 
abandoned the Anti-pedobaptists and henceforth labored 
zealously against them. Dirk Philips long continued to 
labor side by side with Menno. Next to Menno he was the 
chief literary leader of the connection and his practical 
works are still highly prized in Mennonite circles. Leon- 
ard Bouwens probably surpassed both Menno and Philips 
in popular power. He continued to make Emden his 
center and evangelized with great zeal throughout the 
Netherlands, planting churches in many places and en- 
couraging them by his visits. He is said in the course 
of a few years to have baptized ten thousand. It was 
with the utmost reluctance that Bouwens allowed him- 
self to be made a head-elder (or bishop) along with 
Menno and Dirk Philips. His wife was strongly opposed 
to his assuming the responsibilities and incurring the 
dangers that belonged to the office and wrote to Menno 
entreating him to excuse her husband. Menno replied 
most benevolently, yet was inexorable in his insistence 
that Bouwens should assume the office to which he had 
been chosen and for which he was so eminently fitted. 
His chief co-laborer in the Netherlands was Gillis of 
Aachen. 

As already suggested, Menno devoted a large part of 
his attention to literary work. In 1552 he published an 
earnest appeal to the civil rulers on behalf of his perse- 
cuted people, defending them against the charges that 
were made against them by their enemies and setting 



CONTROVERSY WITH MICRONIUS 307 

forth their pious and inoffensive character. A second 
apology was addressed to the evangelical ministers. In 
a third writing he set forth the views of his connection 
with reference to justification, ministry, baptism, the 
Supper, and oaths. The tone of Menno's apologetical 
writings was too polemical to be highly effective, and it 
is doubtful whether they produced any favorable result. 

John a Lasco had been obliged to leave Emden in 1547, 
when, owing to the treachery of Maurice of Saxony, the 
emperor seemed for the time to have the Protestant 
princes at his mercy, and had resolved to crush out every 
vestige of Protestantism in his hereditary possessions. 
Lasco took refuge in England, where he ministered for a 
number of years to a congregation of Polish Protestants. 
Persecution under Mary drove him thence. With two 
other ministers, Utenhofen and Micronius, and about one 
hundred and seventy-five others, he came by ship in 
stormy weather to seek protection from the king of 
Denmark. After being much tossed about and suffering 
fearful hardships, they succeeded in gaining an audience 
with the king. He finally decided, after long consulta- 
tion with his Lutheran preachers, that he could not allow 
such as denied the real presence in the Supper to remain 
in his land. They besought him, in view of their misery 
and the fact that winter was at hand, to allow them to 
remain for the winter. But he was inexorable, and they 
were obliged without further delay to set sail. 

The ship containing Lasco and the other ministers be- 
came fastened in the ice near Wismar. The Mennonites 
were the only persons ready to bear them succor. Lasco 
and the other ministers proceeded with little delay to 
Emden, while a number of their followers remained at 
Wismar. One of these, Hermes by name, soon began 
to agitate for a disputation with Menno. Menno's secu- 
rity at Wismar depended on his avoidance of any sort of 



308 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

publicity. He consented to a disputation on the distinct 
understanding that secrecy should be observed in the 
matter. Hermes sent to East Friesland for Micronius, 
who on February, 1555, disputed for eleven hours with 
Menno on the incarnation of Christ, baptism, the oath, 
and divorce. Without regard to Menno's interests, 
Micronius published an account of the disputation. 
Menno soon afterward published an extended reply to 
Micronius on the points at issue between them as well 
as a reply to Gellius Faber, who had published an ill- 
tempered attack on Menno and his views. The followers 
of Lasco were soon afterward banished from Wismar by 
the Lutheran authorities, toleration being still accorded 
to Menno and his followers. 

In August, 1555, the six Lutheran cities of the Hanse- 
atic League, to which Wismar belonged, decreed the 
banishment of all Anti-pedobaptists. Menno and his 
followers found a retreat at Wustenfelde, in the posses- 
sions of Count Bartholomaeus von Ahlefeldt, who had 
come to know the quiet Anti-pedobaptists in the Nether- 
lands, and who treated Menno with the greatest kind- 
ness. Here he remained till his death in 1559. Bou- 
wens had had chief charge of the work in the Nether- 
lands, and Dirk Philips had been for some years assisting 
Menno in the East Sea region. 

The advantage gained by the emperor over the Prot- 
estant princes in 1547 had soon been lost and the 
exterminating procedures against evangelical teaching 
in the Netherlands were temporarily suspended. Large 
numbers of the Mennonites had suffered martyrdom 
during this period of acute persecution in East Friesland 
and elsewhere. Anabaptism was made punishable with 
death, even in case of repentance. Heavy penalties 
were attached to harboring or in any way ministering to 
Anabaptists. Inquisitors were appointed to search them 



STRASBURG CONFERENCE 309 

out and bring them before the tribunals. Some of the 
nobility suffered among the rest. Yet in spite of perse- 
cution the Mennonites rapidly increased and were soon 
the principal evangelical party in the Netherlands. 

The question of the incarnation of Christ and that of 
the application of church discipline continued to agitate 
the minds of the brethren and to be productive of strife 
and division, by which Menno was deeply grieved. The 
German brethren, now quite numerous (1555), felt that 
the time had come when these and other questions that 
were the occasion of controversy among the quiet Anti- 
pedobaptists should be settled. To this end a conference 
was called at Strasburg, which had become an important 
center of the new connection. A statement framed by 
the conference with reference to the incarnation has 
fortunately been preserved. It is admitted that — 

in many passages of Scripture it seems as if Christ brought his body 
with him from heaven, but in others, as if he received his flesh from 
Mary. Further, it seems also that he is the Father and also God 
himself. The confusion of tongues has come upon the brethren 
in this matter because they would know more than it was intended 
that they should know. 

It is urged that more attention be given to keeping 
God's commandments than to prying into such mys- 
teries. They should be content with the statement : 
"The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us." 
" To take from or to add to these words is not only dis- 
turbing, but it is criminal." It is further stated that 
godlessness and evil are to be overcome more through 
the example of a Christian life and walk than by means 
of words. 

It is evident that this document involved a sharp 
censure of Menno and Philips. A copy of it was sent to 
Menno, who lost no time in framing an answer. 

Menno and those immediately associated with him had 



310 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

formulated nine rules of discipline, which they wished 
all the churches of the connection to follow. These for- 
bade marriage outside of the church and required suspen- 
sion of fellowship in case of such marriage until the life 
had been tested anew ; forbade intercourse, beyond what 
was absolutely necessary, with apostates ; and required 
marital avoidance in case of the evil life of husband or 
wife till amendment. In case of the separation of a mar- 
ried couple on account of religion, the party remaining 
in the church may not marry again unless the apostate 
party marry again or become immoral ; children of be- 
lievers shall not marry without their parents' consent ; 
the payment of just debts may be required, but nothing 
ungodly must be done in collecting ; military service and 
all bearing of arms are strictly prohibited ; no one shall 
set himself up as a teacher or exhorter until he has been 
chosen thereunto by the church and ordained thereunto 
by the elders. 

These rules caused great dissatisfaction in many quar- 
ters. Bouwens sought rigorously to enforce them in the 
churches under his immediate direction. Gillis of Aachen 
met with much opposition in executing them among the 
Waterland churches. The feeling was very general that 
the requirement of marital avoidance involved too serious 
an interference with personal liberty. The Franecker 
church was thrown into confusion by the efforts of the 
strict party to carry out Menno's rules. 

Menno was deeply grieved by the remonstrance of his 
brethren assembled at Strasburg and by the failure of 
many in the Netherlands rigorously to execute his rules. 
He claimed that he and Dirk Philips had always favored 
making allowance for circumstances. He entreated his 
brethren to let the rule requiring marital avoidance 
stand, but to use due caution in executing it. If the inno- 
cent husband or wife feels bound by conscience to adhere 



CONTROVERSY ON DISCIPLINE 31 1 

to the sinful and excommunicated spouse and in the judg- 
ment of the brethren this can be done without endanger- 
ing the Christian life of the innocent party, he makes no 
objection. Yet he would have each case individually in- 
vestigated and passed upon by the elders. He claimed 
to know of three hundred cases in which through the 
guilt of one party both (husband and wife) have been 
brought to destruction. Evidently the cases that would 
escape the application of the rule by Menno and those 
who were like-minded would be few indeed. To make 
his position on this and other matters perfectly clear 
Menno published in 1555 his "Foundation Book," the 
most complete and mature exposition of his system. A 
deputation from the upper German brethren, consisting of 
the teachers Sylis, Lemke, and Heinrich, visited Menno 
at Wismar to discuss this question of marital avoidance 
and if possible to reach a basis of agreement which all 
the churches could accept. These brethren were to re- 
port to the German and Netherland churches ; but so im- 
perfectly did they agree among themselves and so vary- 
ing was the coloring they gave to the conference with 
Menno, that greater confusion than ever ensued. 

In 1557 another convention was held in Strasburg with 
representatives of the Anti-pedobaptist churches of 
Wurtemberg, Swabia, Moravia, Alsace, the Palatinate, 
and Switzerland, the chief purpose being to discuss and 
if possible reach a conclusion on the questions of disci- 
pline that had been thrust upon the churches by the 
rules of Menno and Philips. 

The conference addressed a letter to Menno in which 
they urged him not to be too rigorous and while express- 
ing general agreement with the Wismar rules yet insisted 
on liberty to deal with individual cases on their merits and 
with due regard to the usages of the country in which a 
church is situated. Especially do they think that the ut- 



312 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

most caution should be observed in the application of the 
rule requiring marital avoidance. The command as to 
marriage transcends that as to excommunication. 

The right of the conference to address this remon- 
strance to Menno is grounded on the fact that some of its 
members bore on their persons the marks of torture for 
their faith, while in the house of one of them thirty years 
before an interview with Michael Sattler had taken place. 
Many of the members had traveled one hundred and 
fifty miles at great cost and sacrifice to be present at the 
meeting. 

Mention is also made of a very large meeting of Anti- 
pedobaptists that had occurred at Worms, shortly before, 
in which the doctrines of hereditary sin and of spiritual 
and bodily sin were discussed and much confusion caused 
among the brethren in the Palatinate. The number said 
to have been at the Worms meeting (one thousand four 
hundred or one thousand five hundred) is suspiciously 
large ; but it is evident that there was at this time in the 
Palatinate as well as in Alsace and in the lower Rhenish 
regions a large Anti-pedobaptist element that wished to 
maintain a good understanding with Menno, yet viewed 
independently the questions that from time to time arose. 

It may be remarked that at this time there was consid- 
erable activity among the Anti-pedobaptists in Hesse, 
Westphalia, Switzerland, and in fact in most of the 
countries of Western Europe. This was due in part to 
the encouragment received from the successful movement 
in the Netherlands ; but to a larger extent it was due to 
the revival of the religious life that had been so fearfully 
persecuted just before and for some time after the 
Munster catastrophe. The Munster affair was now well 
in the past and there was coming to be a slight realiza- 
tion among rulers that all Anti-pedobaptists were not 
Munsterites. 



MENNO'S DEATH 313 

With a view to restoring unity and order in the 
churches Menno, now growing infirm with age and dis- 
ease, made a visit to the churches in Friesland and after- 
ward attended a conference at Cologne. The result was 
by no means according to his desire. Almost broken- 
hearted he returned to his home. The last few years of 
his life were embittered by the controversies in the 
churches of the connection which his influence was in- 
adequate to allay. He died January 23, 1559. 

Literature: Works of Menno Simons and Dirk Philips, " Mennon- 
itische Blatter, " Doopsgezinde Bijdragen," and monographs of 
Brons, Cramer, Roosen, De Hoop Scheffer, Van Braght, Blaupot 
ten Cate, Schyn, Hamelmann, Upeij u. Dermout, and Van Slee, as 
in the Bibliography. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE LATER MENNONITES 

BY 1559, tne date °f Menno's decease, those who 
agreed substantially with the great organizer of 
quiet Anti-pedobaptist life numbered many thousands. 
Lutheranism had long been practically extinct in the 
Netherlands. The Calvinistic type of teaching, soon to 
become dominant, had long since proved itself better 
adapted to the genius of the people and had supplanted it. 

The great mass of the people had come to abominate 
the Spanish rule and the Catholic religion with which 
the gloomy and unscrupulous king Philip II. was so 
thoroughly identified. After the accession of Philip, 
Calvinism grew more aggressive. It soon became evi- 
dent that the king would give no quarter to evangelical 
religion in any of its forms. The persecuting measures 
under the direction of the Duke of Alva (1567 onward) 
are too well known to need recounting here. It is prob- 
able that by 1572 nearly twenty thousand evangelical 
Christians had fallen a sacrifice to Philip's cruel zeal. 

The effect of the persecution was to intensify the en- 
thusiasm of the Calvinists. Their preachers did not 
hesitate to risk their lives in proclaiming the truth and 
thousands would gather to hear them. A large number 
of Mennonites suffered among the rest, but as they were 
on principle quiet and non-resisting and did not openly 
antagonize their persecutors they probably suffered less 
in proportion to their numbers than the Calvinists. 

The conviction was growing upon the people of the 
Netherlands that the time was at hand when by a 
desperate struggle the galling Spanish Catholic yoke 
3H 



MENNONITE PARTIES 315 

must be thrown off. The Mennonites with their radical 
opposition to warfare and their principle of absolute non- 
resistance could not under such circumstances hope to 
win to their cause the controlling life of the land. Men 
like William of Orange sympathized deeply with the 
Mennonites in many things ; but if he and others who 
were like-minded had united themselves with their non- 
resisting friends they would all together, so far as we can 
see, have been led like sheep to the slaughter by the 
relentless Spaniards. It was in the very nature of things 
that militant Calvinism should carry the day. 

In the forty years' struggle with Spain that began in 
1568 the Mennonites occupied the somewhat inconsistent 
position of being liberal contributors to the expenses of 
the war and assisting the patriotic cause in every possible 
indirect way, and yet refusing on conscientious grounds 
to bear arms. 

Before and during the war the Mennonites were as a 
body a most prosperous people. Industry and thrift in- 
sured to almost all a competency and to many large 
means. They were foremost in contributing to every 
benevolent cause, and in no way restricted their gifts 
to denominational channels. They became noted for 
their honesty and uprightness, and though they refused 
to take judicial oaths, their word was considered a suffi- 
cient guarantee for their faithful performance of all obli- 
gations. While even in their most prosperous times they 
insisted upon the utmost plainness in dress, they made 
up in a measure for this excessive plainness by requiring 
whatever they used to be the very best of its kind. So 
noticeable was their care in this regard that the term 
"Mennist-fine " came to be used in trade to designate 
the best that could be made. 

The controversy on discipline that Menno himself had 
been utterly unable to prevent or allay continued after 



316 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

his death and increased, in its violence. Party divisions, 
some of which have continued to the present time, soon 
became clearly marked. Four of these we note in the 
early time. The Waterlanders occupied the extreme 
liberal position laying much stress upon the freedom of 
the individual. Their churches were contemptuously 
nicknamed by their strict opponents "truck-wagons." 
The extreme position as regards disciplinary rigor was 
occupied by the Flemings, who made such matters as 
dress a ground for discipline, insisted on marital avoid- 
ance of an excommunicated member, and in general 
strove to carry out Menno's rules more rigorously than 
he himself would have thought of doing. Intermediate 
between these were the Upper German and Frisian 
churches and the "young" or "loose Frisians," the 
latter closely approaching the position of the Water- 
landers. 

There can be no doubt that among the stricter parties 
the rigorous exercise of discipline sometimes amounted 
almost to persecution and that the spirit of censorious- 
ness was cultivated at the expense of brotherly love. 
An illustration of this tendeney is afforded by the famous 
case of Bintgens, an elder in the Franecker church. 
Bintgens had purchased a house for seven hundred flor- 
ins, which he allowed the seller for purposes of his own 
to value in the deed at eight hundred florins, deriving 
himself no benefit whatever from the misstatement. 
When this came to the ears of a brother elder he de- 
clared that Bintgens had sinned by being a party to 
a fraud. The matter was brought up in the local church 
where Bintgens expressed his profound sorrow for what 
had occurred, but maintained his entire innocence of any 
fraudulent intention in the matter. He would have 
sooner paid double the value of the house than wrong 
any one. The church seemed satisfied with his state- 



THE BINTGENS CONTROVERSY 317 

ment. Two of the elders, however, some time afterward 
began to agitate the matter afresh, and appealed to the 
elders of the neighboring churches for their opinion of the 
case. These refused to give an opinion without further 
knowledge of the circumstances. 

Two parties were now formed in the church, the one 
demanding Bintgens' deposition from office, the other 
sustaining him. A council was called to adjudicate on 
the matter. Bintgens now claimed that while he had 
paid only seven hundred florins in money, he had given 
to the seller one hundred florins' worth of linen. No 
definite result was reached, but the prevailing sentiment 
seems to have been unfavorable to Bintgens. 

A second council was called at which Bintgens' ac- 
cusers demanded not only his deposition from office, but 
his exclusion from church fellowship. There was a dif- 
ference of opinion as to whether the matter should be 
decided by all the churches or by some brethren espe- 
cially appointed thereunto, or whether the procedure en- 
joined in 1 Tim. 5 : 19, 20 should not be followed. 

A third council failing to agree, the Amsterdam and 
Haarlem brethren advised that the opinion of brethren in 
Groningen, Cologne, and Emden be sought. The coun- 
cil ended in bitter wrangling, some of the brethren ac- 
cusing others of trying to cover up Bintgens' guilt. Bint- 
gens' party refused to admit the right of the Groningen 
and Emden brethren to be consulted in the premises. 
The Amsterdam brethren pronounced against Bintgens 
and secured the concurrence of those of Emden and 
Groningen ; the Haarlem brethren took the side of the 
accused. The Haarlem church became so exasperated 
with that of Amsterdam as to withdraw from its fellow- 
ship. The dominant party persisted in condemning Bint- 
gens and his adherents and stigmatized them as " House 
buyers" and " Bankrupts." 



318 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

The transaction that occasioned the controversy took 
place in 1588. In 1590 the bitter divisions just men- 
tioned were at their height. The vindication of the prin- 
ciple of absolute honesty was worth much, but it is doubt- 
ful whether it was worth what it cost in this case. The 
censure of the local church with Bintgens' expression of 
sorrow for what had occurred should, it seems, have suf- 
ficed. This is only a sample of divisions that were con- 
stantly occurring through undue rigor in the exercise of 
disciplinary functions. 

From 1574 onward the Reformed (Calvinistic) church 
sought persistently to destroy the Mennonites, but they 
enjoyed the protection of William the Silent and after- 
ward of Maurice of Nassau. The Synod of Dort in 1574 
decided to exhort the government to tolerate no one who 
would not swear obedience to it, to compel the Mennon- 
ites to have their infants baptized, and in case of refusal 
to turn them over to the Reformed ministers to be dealt 
with. They also sought the right to intrude themselves 
into the assemblies of the Mennonites for the purpose of 
convincing them of their errors. In West Friesland they 
secured for a time the latter privilege and used it greatly 
to the annoyance of the brethren. Having gained the 
support of Count Leicester, who had come to the Nether- 
lands as a representative of Queen Elizabeth, to aid the 
Dutch in their war with Spain, the Reformed ministers, 
though their membership constituted as yet only a small 
fraction of the population (one-tenth according to some 
authorities) sought to secure recognition as the estab- 
lished church of the land with power to coerce dissent. 
Maurice of Nassau, under the advice of Barnaveld, fol- 
lowed the example of his honored father, William the 
Silent, in protecting the Mennonites. 

In 1596 a public disputation, lasting from August 16 to 
November 17 and embracing one hundred and fifty-five 



PERSECUTED BY THE REFORMED 319 

sittings, was held at Leeuwarden in Friesland between 
Ruardus Acronius on behalf of the Reformed and Peter 
of Cologne on behalf of the Mennonites. The aim of 
the disputation on the Reformed side was, apparently, by 
bringing out into publicity the teachings of the Menno- 
nites to gain a pretext for their persecution. 

The protocol of the disputation was published by the 
Reformed party, accompanied by a claim of complete 
victory and violent denunciations of the Mennonites. 
The preface, which occupies fifty-two closely printed 
quarto pages, concludes with an impassioned appeal to 
the authorities to withdraw all toleration from the Ana- 
baptists, whose principles are declared to strike at the 
root of saving truth and of civil and religious order, and 
whose doctrine, founded in lying hypocrisy, eats as doth 
a gangrene. 

Peter of Cologne was probably the most prominent of 
the Mennonite teachers of the time. Though seventy 
years of age, he conducted the Mennonite side in the 
prolonged disputation with marked ability and to the sat- 
isfaction of his brethren. Neither he nor his opponent 
adhered rigidly to the agreement to avoid all bitterness 
which, under any circumstances, would have been diffi- 
cult. 

The Reformed synods at Franecker and Harlingen 
sought to induce the magistracy to restrain Peter from 
preaching in Friesland. 

About 1601 a book of Beza's defending the execution 
of heretics was translated into Dutch and published, the 
chief object being to prepare the public mind for the 
slaughter of the Mennonites. In the preface it is argued 
that to tolerate heresy is to make peace with Satan. 
Only one church must be tolerated in the State. 

In answer to the objection that some might raise to the 
persecution of heretics on the ground of loss of trade, 



320 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

etc., it is answered that it is better to have a city deso- 
late and uninhabited than a thriving city full of heretics. 
In some places the Mennonites were refused the privilege 
of dQing business or of holding meetings and their min- 
isters were fined and ordered to go into banishment. 

In 1603 a Reformed synod asked the government to 
restrain the Mennonite bishops from traveling from place 
to place, preaching and baptizing ; in 1604 the govern- 
ment was asked to prohibit the ordaining of young min- 
isters by the Mennonites ; in 1605 it was petitioned not 
to allow them to build any more chapels. The most de- 
termined efforts on the part of the Calvinists to crush 
out the Mennonites by the use of the civil power were 
continued almost without intermission during the seven- 
teenth century. If the Mennonites were not destroyed 
root and branch, but were able to survive the calumny 
and persecution to which they were subjected, it was 
due to no lack of zeal on the part of the Reformed min- 
isters, but rather to their power of endurance and the 
restraining influence of the government. 

The Socinian wave that swept over the Protestant 
Netherlands during the last years of the sixteenth cen- 
tury and the early years of the seventeenth did not leave 
the Mennonites unaffected. In common with the rest of 
the Anti-pedobaptists and with the old-evangelical party 
of the mediaeval time, the Mennonites had from the be- 
ginning been most pronounced in their opposition to the 
Augustinian system as it had been revived and modified 
by Luther and Calvin. They had much in common with 
the Socinians, who, as we shall see, were themselves 
rigid Anti-pedobaptists and insisted on the inspiration and 
authority of the Scriptures, while they gave to Christ a 
position not of co-equality with the Father, but yet of 
exaltation above all created things. His miraculous con- 
ception, his creative, providential, and redemptive work 



THE RHYNSBURGERS 321 

were unreservedly accepted. As regards original sin, the 
will, and justification, the Socinianism as expounded in the 
Racovian Catechism (1590), was not essentially different 
from that of the old-evangelical party as perpetuated by 
the Anti-pedobaptists in general and by the Mennonites. 

Calvinism never assumed a more extreme type than it 
assumed in the Netherlands about the beginning of the 
seventeenth century. The mighty reaction against 
hyper-Calvinism under Socinian and other influences re- 
sulting in the rending asunder of the Reformed church 
and the formation of the Remonstrant or Arminian com- 
munion, with the years of strife and persecution that 
preceded and followed the Synod of Dort (1618), could 
not have failed to interest and influence the Mennonites. 
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries sup- 
posed sympathy with Socinianism on the part of some of 
the Mennonites was alike an occasion of internal strife 
and of attacks from their Calvinistic opponents. 

About 1619 a movement originated at Rhynsburg, Hol- 
land, that not only sustains an important relation to the 
subsequent history of the Mennonites, but has also an 
interesting point of contact with English Baptist history. 
The brothers van der Kodde (John, Adrian, William, and 
Gisbrecht), by way of reaction against the religious 
strife of the time, began to hold meetings for Christian 
fellowship and prophesying. They repudiated creeds and 
eschewed all controversy. Their meetings were open to 
all true believers, each of whom had the fullest liberty 
of taking part in the exercises. Their assemblies were 
largely devoted to the edifying interpretation of the Scrip- 
tures whose authority they accepted. The breaking of 
bread, in commemoration of the incarnation and death of 
Christ and as a means of communion of believers, 
prayer, and the singing of hymns, formed prominent 
features of their meetings. The Christian ministry as a 
v 



322 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

distinct office they thought unnecessary and harmful. 
The New Testament having been given, Christians had 
no need that any one should teach them, but all alike 
should draw from the revealed word as they might be 
able and each should be in his measure a teacher of 
others. They baptized into the fellowship of the saints 
by immersion. Their modes of religious thought were 
distinctly anti-Calvinistic. Socinianism was undoubt- 
edly the chief source of their impulse, although they did 
not dogmatize as did the Socinians on the person of 
Christ, etc. It is highly probable that they were in- 
fluenced to a considerable extent by the Mennonites, with 
many of whose views they thoroughly agreed and who 
certainly took a prominent part in the movement after 
its organization. 

Deprived to a great extent of educational advantages 
the Mennonites utilized the meetings of the Rhyns- 
burgers (or Collegiants) as means of improvement and 
edification. It is also probable that the introduction of 
immersion by the Rhynsburgers was due to Socinian 
influence, as the Socinians insisted on immersion while 
the Mennonites usually practised sprinkling or affusion. 
After a period of prosperity the movement gradually 
declined and became extinct early in the present cen- 
tury. 

It does not fall within the plan of the present work to 
trace the history of the Mennonites beyond the first 
quarter of the seventeenth century, when they exerted 
an influence on the rise of the English Baptists. 

Literature: Works of Menno Simons and Dirk Philips, " Men- 
nonitische Blatter," " Doopsgezinde Bijdragen," and monographs 
of Brons, Cramer, Roosen, De Hoop-Scheffer, Van Braght, Blaupot 
ten Cate, Schyn, Hamelmann, Upeij u. Dermout, and Van Slee, as 
in the Bibliography. 



CHAPTER XXV 

ITALY AND POLAND 

NO country of Europe was more hospitable to free- 
dom of thought at the beginning of the sixteenth 
century than Italy. As the center of the Renaissance, 
with its repugnance to scholasticism and its devotion to 
classical modes of thought and expression, Italy was the 
theatre of a widespread departure from the old faith and 
the development of radical types of Christian thought. 

Several of the popes of the latter part of the fifteenth 
and the early years of the sixteenth centuries are said to 
have been free-thinkers of the most pronounced type, 
and the Roman Curia was not likely under such circum- 
stances to apply the inquisition of heresy with pristine 
vigor. Before the outbreak of the Protestant Revolution 
clubs of learned men of evangelical tendencies were in 
the habit of meeting in various places for the discus- 
sion of theological questions and for mutual edification. 

There is no reason to suppose that the evangelical 
movement of which Lombardy had been since the 
twelfth century a chief center had been exterminated 
during the later Middle Ages. It is probable, on the 
other hand, that a large proportion of the evangelical 
Christians whom we meet in Italy during the fourth and 
following decades of the sixteenth century had earlier 
been under old-evangelical influence. From the Rhas- 
tian provinces of Switzerland and from the contiguous 
districts of the Tyrol the old-evangelical life of Northern 
Italy was no doubt reinforced and made aggressive by 
the Anti-pedobaptists who abounded in the former terri- 
tories. 

323 



324 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

That evangelical Anti-pedobaptist views should have 
there become blended with the radical modes of thought, 
the later development of which we see in the Italico-Polish 
anti-trinitarian movement, is quite comprehensible. The 
tendency of Italian Humanism was to call in question, 
with the errors and corruptions of the mediaeval church, 
the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion ; and 
the doctrine of the Trinity was sure to be assailed. 

The writings of Luther and of the evangelical leaders 
of Switzerland and Southern Germany were somewhat 
widely circulated in Italy from 1520 onward. Anti-trini- 
tarian tendencies were doubtless fostered to a consider- 
able extent by the writings of the Spanish anti-trini- 
tarian Michael Servetus, which are known to have been 
in circulation during the fourth decade of the century. 
Servetus was one of the most zealous of Anti-pedobap- 
tists. He declared infant baptism to be " a figment of 
Anti-christ" and "a figment of Satan." He adduced 
twenty-five reasons why pedobaptism should be abol- 
ished. He insisted that as Adam was born thirty years 
old, as the Jews were permitted to enter the sanctuary 
only after the thirtieth year, and as Christ was baptized 
when thirty years old, so believers should be baptized 
at this age. He had a peculiar view of the right mode 
of administering the ordinance. The candidate should 
go down into the water and then have water poured upon 
his head. While he emphasized the importance of faith 
as a prerequisite to baptism and held that baptism with- 
out faith effects nothing, he was yet assured that baptism 
adds something to faith. If two believers prepared for 
baptism should die, the one baptized and the other un- 
baptized, the former alone would be free from the power 
and the pains of hell. 1 

1 See " Restitutio Christianismi," pp. 228, seq., 411, seq., 560, seq., 570, seq., 48^ 
seq., 492, seq., 616, seq., etc. 



CAMILLO RENATO 325 

The Republic of Venice had long been a place of refuge 
for political as well as religious fugitives and was able to 
resist the efforts of the Roman Curia to introduce the in- 
quisition until 1 5 5 1 . Early Socinian tradition knew of a 
college or club of freethinkers at Vicenza in the Repub- 
lic of Venice about 1546. It is not in accord with the 
purpose of the present work to investigate the rise of the 
anti-trinitarianism as such in Italy, and this movement 
claims attention only from the fact that it was closely 
connected with an important Anti-pedobaptist movement. 
One of the earliest representatives of this liberal Anti- 
pedobaptist tendency was the Sicilian, Camillo Renato, 
who was active as a teacher in Caspano, Traona, Chia- 
venna, and Vicosoprano, during the years 1542-45. He 
has been fitly characterized as a " Calvinistic Quaker." 
A rigid predestinarian, he held that the elect and only 
they have the spirit of God and so are immortal. Souls 
that have not the Holy Spirit die, those that have the 
Spirit only slumber in death to receive afterward a re- 
newed, purely spiritual form of being. The child of the 
Spirit needs no external law. The sacraments are only 
symbols of truths that have already been realized in the 
heirs of the kingdom. The Supper is a memorial of 
Christ's death. Baptism is only an external sign that the 
old man has been put away. 

In a controversy with Meinardo, who had adopted the 
Reformed view of the sacraments, he repudiated baptism 
received "under the pope and antichrist," in a special 
writing, and openly denied that infant baptism was in 
accord with the "doctrine of the gospel." He had no 
sympathy with the Reformed view that infant baptism 
takes the place of circumcision. He laid great emphasis 
on regeneration, which involves a complete transforma- 
tion of our nature and constitutes us children of God and 
heirs of eternal life. 



326 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Camillo Renato was closely associated with a number 
of men who became prominent anti-trinitarians, among 
others with Laslius Socinus, then a young man, and 
Celio Secundo Curio. His correspondence with Bullinger 
of Zurich, with whose views of the Supper he was in sub- 
stantial accord, was broken off as a result of his contro- 
versy with Meinardo on baptism. In his rejection of in- 
fant baptism he soon had a considerable following. 
Among the most noted of his first disciples were Fran- 
cesco Negri, and the physician Pietro da Casali Maggiore, 
one of the most zealous Anti-pedobaptists of the time. 

Greater by far than the influence of Camillo was that 
of Tiziano. Almost nothing is known of his antece- 
dents. We first meet him about 1547 or 1548, fleeing 
from place to place to escape persecution. Camillo had 
declared himself opposed to infant baptism, but there is 
no evidence that he submitted to or practised believers' 
baptism. It is probable that he attached too little im- 
portance to external rites to think either worth while. 

Pietro Manelfi, an ex-priest, was led by the teachings 
of the famous Capuchin friars Hieronimo Spinazola and 
Bernardino Ochino to believe that the pope was anti- 
christ. He was baptized along with a number of other 
notable men by Tiziano in 1548 or 1549, and after serv- 
ing for some years as a leader among the Italian Anti- 
pedobaptists became an apostate and a traitor. He at- 
tributed the following teachings to Tiziano : (1) Insist- 
ence of believers' baptism ; (2) rejection of magistracy as 
inconsistent with the spirit of Christianity ; (3) mainte- 
nance of the symbolical and memorial nature of the sacra- 
ments ; (4) exaltation of the Scriptures as the only crite- 
rion of the faith; (5) denunciation of the Romish church 
as devilish and absolutely anti-christian. As ordinances 
administered by this anti-christian church are of no value 
he insisted on believers' baptism. 



CONVENTION AT VENICE 327 

By 1550 about forty Anti-pedobaptist churches, scat- 
tered throughout Northern Italy and contiguous parts of 
Switzerland, were in fellowship with each other and were 
enjoying the periodical visitations of a general superin- 
tendent. Their connectional organization seems to have 
been very similar to that of the Waldensian churches of 
the earlier time. 

The churches had become greatly agitated over the 
question "whether Christ is God, or man." To settle 
this question it was decided to secure the assembling of 
all the ministers of all the churches at Venice. No church 
was to send more than two representatives, yet there 
were about sixty delegates present. As many distant 
churches would not be likely to send a full delegation, it 
is probable that at least forty churches were represented. 
Among the delegates were Tiziano, Iseppo of Asola, 
Manelfi, Celio Secundo Curio, afterward to become 
famous as an advocate of freedom of conscience and as 
author of the " Tragedy of Free Will," Francesco Negri, 
and the ex-abbot Hieronimo Buzano, who had offered to 
his Anti-pedobaptist church the income of one thousand 
ducats a year from his office. It is gratifying to know 
that the church declined to receive anything "from the 
blood of the beast." An interesting feature of this con- 
vention is that the churches paid the expenses of their 
delegates. 

Unfortunately the doctrinal beliefs of this large and 
respectable Anti-pedobaptist convention were far less 
satisfactory than their attitude toward the corruptions of 
Rome and their views on the ordinances. It was decided 
that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were 
to be accepted as the fundamental authority. Thrice 
during the meeting the Supper was celebrated. The ut- 
most devoutness seems to have characterized the entire 
proceedings of the convention. And yet after forty 



328 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

days of earnest discussion they reached the following 
conclusions : (i) Christ is not God but man, begotten by 
Joseph of Mary, but full of all divine powers. (2) Mary 
afterward bore other sons and daughters. (3) There are 
no angels as a special class of beings ; where Scripture 
speaks of angels, it means servants — that is, men sent 
by God for definite purposes. (4) There is only one 
devil, namely, human prudence. By the serpent, who, 
according to Moses' account, seduced Eve, nothing else 
than this is to be understood. (5) The godless are not to 
be awakened at the last day, but only the elect, whose 
Head Christ has been. (6) There is no other hell than 
the grave. (7) If the elect die, they slumber till the day 
of judgment, when they shall all be awakened. (8) The 
souls of the godless pass into dissolution with their bodies 
just as in the case of the beasts. (9) Human seed has 
from God the capacity to propagate flesh and spirit. (10) 
The elect are justified through God's eternal mercy and 
love, without any sort of external work, that is, without 
the merit, blood, and death of Christ. 

Such is the account of his brethren that Manelfi, 
who, having by years of personal visitation and inter- 
course secured complete information as to the connec- 
tion, gave to the Inquisition. There is no reason to 
doubt its substantial accuracy, as its main features are 
otherwise known to be in accordance with the facts. 
It is possible that only those churches were included 
in the connection that were understood to entertain low 
views of the person of Christ. We have abundant evi- 
dence a few years later in the records of the Inquisition 
that side by side with the anti-trinitarian Anti-pedobap- 
tists were some who rejected the anti-trinitarian and 
other errors to which the convention at Venice almost 
unanimously subscribed. 

Manelfi's report to the Inquisition furnishes a full and 



MANELFI'S TREACHERY 329 

seemingly accurate account of the church organization 
of the anti-trinitarian Anti-pedobaptists of Italy and 
Switzerland. It seems to have been almost identical 
with that of the Waldenses of the Middle Ages. Each 
local congregation had its ministers ordained by the 
"apostolic bishops," or general superintendents. The 
functions of these latter were to "preach the word and 
to constitute ministers." A connection of churches had 
grown up before the time of the convention referred to, 
and this connection was fostered through the regular 
visitation of the congregations by the itinerant super- 
intendents or bishops. A superintendent was usually 
accompanied in his itinerating by a less-experienced 
brother, who thus secured the necessary training in the 
arts of evading the authorities and of reaching success- 
fully the scattered and persecuted flocks. For instance, 
Manelfi had accompanied Marcantonio of Asola in his 
visitation of the churches in Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, 
and Istria. He had visited the churches in the Romagna, 
in Ferrara, and in Tuscany, in company with the 
" bishop," Lorenzo Nicoluzzo, from Modiana. As a trav- 
eling companion of Pasqualino of Asola he had again 
visited the churches in Ferrara, Padua, and Vicenza. 

From Manelfi we learn that the brethren practised a 
most effective method of warning each of approaching 
danger, through special messengers dispatched to the 
various threatened congregations. They were shrewd 
enough likewise to visit and console brethren in prison 
despite the rigid prohibition of the authorities. He him- 
self had visited an Anti-pedobaptist brother in prison, 
and while there had converted and baptized a Lutheran 
prisoner. Manelfi was able to give the most detailed 
information with reference to the entire connection and 
with reference to individual congregations. 

It was upon one of his tours of visitation in Octo- 



330 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

ber, 155 1, as he was passing through Ravenna on his 
way to Tuscany, that the conviction pressed itself upon 
him that he was an apostate from the true faith and that 
there was nothing left for him but to retrace his steps 
and seek as far as in him lay to undo the evil that he had 
accomplished during his years of apostasy. He forsook 
his companion, made his way to Bologna, threw himself 
at the feet of the inquisitors, and was restored to the fel- 
lowship of the Romish church. 

It was natural that the authorities should insist upon his 
furnishing all the information he possessed for assisting 
the inquisitors in their work of exterminating heresy, and 
he showed no reluctance in betraying those with whom 
he had so long and so zealously labored and whose con- 
fidence he had so fully enjoyed. Of the large number 
of Anti-pedobaptists arraigned by the Inquisition through 
the information furnished by Manelfi the majority re- 
nounced their faith and promised to return to their alle- 
giance to Rome. A considerable number fled to Moravia 
and Poland. Some of those who took refuge among the 
ever-hospitable and at that time highly prosperous 
brethren in Moravia were convinced by them of the 
errors of the Italian brethren with reference to the per- 
son of Christ, the future life, etc., and were filled with 
yearning to instruct their Anti-pedobaptist fellow-country- 
men more perfectly in the way of the Lord and to induce 
as many of them as possible to take refuge in the goodly 
land where they themselves had been so kindly received 
and so richly blessed. 

Among the most noteworthy of the Italian anti-trini- 
tarian Anti-pedobaptists who were brought to evangelical 
views through intercourse with the Moravians was Giulio 
Gherlandi. Educated for the priesthood and already in- 
troduced into one of its lower grades, Gherlandi, while 
still a young man, was awakened by our Lord's warn- 



LETTER FROM MORAVIA 33 1 

ing, which he found in the Breviary : " Beware of false 
prophets," etc. His knowledge of the corrupt lives of 
the clergy led him to identify them with the false 
prophets that inwardly were ravening wolves. After 
much prayerful heart-searching he determined to leave 
the Romish church and to seek a people " who should be 
free through the gospel of truth from the bondage of sin 
and should walk in newness of life, a people that is 
God's holy, unspotted church, separate from sinners, 
without wrinkle and without blemish." 

About 1549 he came in contact with the Anti-pedobap- 
tists and was baptized at Treviso by Nicolao d'Alessan- 
dria. He became an active worker in the new fellowship 
and baptized a number of converts. Some time between 
1 55 1 and 1557 he went to Moravia and was soon brought 
into complete accord with the doctrines and the mode of 
life of the brethren there. In 1557 he was sent on a 
mission to Italy to warn his friends against "that pesti- 
lential doctrine" — denial of the deity of Christ. His 
aim was after instructing his brethren in right doctrine to 
lead them away to Moravia, " since there was no servant 
of the word to be found in Italy." This first mission he 
seems to have accomplished in safety. 

In 1 5 59 he was sent a second time to Italy. This time 
he was accompanied by two other brethren. They bore 
a letter from Francesco della Saga, an influential Italian 
Anti-pedobaptist convert to Moravian orthodoxy, to the 
Anti-pedobabtist church at Vicenza. The document be- 
gins : 

We, the church sanctified through Jesus Christ and received into 
the communion of God the Father and of his Son Jesus Christ, 
together with the elders and ministers, desire for all those who are in 
Italy and would live perfectly in the truth, insight into the divine 
will : that with upright heart they may recognize Christ in his 
power, embrace him, yield themselves up to him, and thereby be- 
come partakers of his fellowship and of eternal life. 



332 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

The writer is just as careful to warn his hearers 
against the opposite (Hofmannite) error of denying the 
true, humanity of Christ by maintaining that he brought 
his flesh with him from heaven. Adverse reference is 
also made to other errors into which the Italian party had 
fallen, such as conditional immortality and denial of the 
existence of angels and of the devil ; and the hope is 
expressed that if they still hold to such views they will 
soon abandon them and allow themselves to be led by 
the Spirit of God into the true church. 

This short letter gives us a clear insight into the spirit 
that actuated the Italian brethren who in Moravia had 
been won to right views of the person of Christ in their 
efforts to deliver their fellow-countrymen from what 
they saw to be ruinous errors. In the efforts which 
they put forth in this direction they had the hearty co- 
operation of the entire Moravian brotherhood with whom 
they had become identified. 

To facilitate their work in reaching the scattered breth- 
ren in Italy, Gherlandi and his companions had been fur- 
nished with a list of the names of brethren in various 
places, especially we may suppose of those thought to be 
most likely to respond to the sentiments of the letter and 
to the efforts of the missionaries. It seems to us little 
short of criminal that at such a time men with such a 
mission should have run the risk for themselves and for 
those whom they were seeking to bless that was involved 
in carrying on their persons such documents. To what 
extent they had accomplished their mission before they 
were arrested and their brethren throughout Italy be- 
trayed into the hands of the Inquisition we are not in a 
position to determine. Some time before October 14, 
1 561, when he had his first hearing before the Inquisition, 
Gherlandi was seized in the Venetian jurisdiction and the 
documents referred to were used by the inquisitors for his 



GHERLANDI AND SAGA 333 

own condemnation as well as that of those whose names 
appeared on his lists. The Counter-Reformation was now 
in full progress. The clues furnished by the document 
were utilized to the utmost ; large numbers were seized 
and subjected to torture with a view of ascertaining the 
names and whereabouts of as many of their brethren as 
possible. 

Gherlandi's admirable account of his life and of the 
principles and practices of the Moravian Anti-pedobap- 
tists, with whom he was in complete and loving accord, 
has already been referred to. 

Another Italian convert to Moravian orthodoxy claims 
our attention. Francesca della Saga, of Rovigo, born in 
1532, while a student in the University of Padua was 
brought by a severe illness and the earnest words of an 
artisan to reflect upon his spiritual condition. Late in the 
fifties we find him among the Moravians, working at the 
tailor's trade and occupying a position of considerable in- 
fluence. He made several journeys to Italy to look after 
his inheritance and to promote the welfare of his Italian 
brethren. 

In 1562 we find him engaged in an earnest effort on be- 
half of his fellow-countrymen, in company with Antonio 
Rizzetto of Vicenza. Their efforts were being crowned 
with success when they were betrayed by a false 
brother and, just as they were setting sail from Capo 
d'Istria on their way to Moravia with a large company of 
coreligionists, were seized by the authorities. Among 
the prisoners was the physician Nicolao Bucella, Most of 
the members of the party came from a church that seems 
never to have affiliated with the radical Anti-trinitarian 
element. 

Gherlandi was still in prison and, witnessing to the last 
most heroically to the truth, was sentenced to death by 
drowning in October, 1562. Saga's trial occurred at 



334 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

about the same time. His confession of faith, which the 
authorities allowed him to make in writing and which has 
been preserved, is in harmony with the highest and pur- 
est type of Anti-pedobaptist teaching. His letters to the 
brethren in Moravia and to the members of his own 
family, who had no sympathy with his religious views 
and who held completely aloof from him, reveal to us an 
extraordinarily pure and noble Christian character. After 
more than two years of imprisonment both Saga and 
Rizzetto were executed by drowning in 1565. We hear 
little or nothing henceforth of Anti-pedobaptists in Italy. 
It is probable that most of those who did not renounce 
their faith made their way to Moravia and Poland. 

Humanism found its way early to Poland and in point 
of intelligence and tolerance the Polish nobles were at 
the beginning of the Reformation in advance of the same 
class in most other lands. A lively intercourse was 
maintained between Italy and Poland, and many free- 
thinking Italians found refuge and employment in the 
retinues of Polish nobles. Poland had been strongly in- 
fluenced by the Hussite movement of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, for after the defeat of the Hussites in Bohemia 
and Moravia many had emigrated to this land of freedom. 
Anti-pedobaptists from Germany and Moravia had gone 
thither in considerable numbers during the fourth and 
fifth decades of the century. Lutherans and Reformed 
had each a considerable constituency. As no one party 
possessed overmastering strength toleration became a ne- 
cessity even to those that were not tolerant on principle. 
Lutherans, Reformed, Bohemian Brethren, Anti-pedo- 
baptists, and anti-trinitarians existed side by side, each 
having their special favorers among the nobility. 

Laslius Socinus, who in his own person and through 
his less-learned but more aggressive nephew, Faustus 
Socinus, gave a great impulse to the anti-trinitarian 



POLISH ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 335 

movement in Poland that came to bear his family name, 
had been closely associated with Camillo Renato, the 
Italian Anti-pedobaptist. Lselius himself was suspected 
as early as 1555 of holding to Anti-pedobaptist views. 1 

Peter Gonesius, a Pole, after studying at Wittenberg 
and in Switzerland, where he came under the influence 
of the anti-trinitarian teachings of Servetus and of the 
Italian free-thinkers, returned to Poland and began zeal- 
ously to propagate his views about 1555. He denounced 
the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds as human fictions, de- 
nied the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and 
repudiated the Lutheran doctrine of the communication 
of idioms, in accordance with which by virtue of union 
with the divine the human nature of Christ has been ex- 
alted so as to possess in their fullness all divine attributes. 

In 1558 he presented to the Reformed synod a treatise 
against infant baptism, which he sought to prove neither 
scriptural, ancient, Christian, nor reasonable. 2 He was 
defended by Jerome Pieskarski and soon found many 
favorers among the nobles. His Anti-pedobaptist views 
were vigorously propagated by Martin Czechowitz ; his 
anti-trinitarian views found a warm advocate in the bril- 
liant but not over-scrupulous Italian physician, George 
Biandrata. Simler connected the growth of Anti-pedobap- 
tist sentiments in Poland as well as of dissension in 
general with the advent of Bernardo Ochino, the great 
Capuchin preacher, who after his expulsion from Zurich 
came to Poland in his old age in 1564. It is by no means 
certain however that Ochino denied infant baptism. 3 

1 See letter of Julius Mediolanus, minister at Peschlav, to Bullinger (November 4, 
1555). printed in the " Museum Helveticum," Part XIV., p. 289. Julius warns Bul- 
linger against Laslius, who had recently persuaded the Zurich pastor of his doc- 
trinal soundness. "We have had sufficient experience of the fact that Servetians 
and Anabaptists do not easily put aside what they have once imbibed." 

2 See on Gonesius, Foch, " Der Socinianismus," Vol. I., p. 143, seq. 

8 SimIer's charge against Ochino is quoted in "Museum Helveticum," Part XIV., 
p. 231, seq. 



336 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

One of the most noted of the early Anti-pedobaptist 
and anti-trinitarian leaders of Poland was Gregorius 
Paulus, pastor at Cracow. John a Lasco represents him 
as thundering against God's essence and trinity, as 
proceeding to such further madness as to deny "that in- 
fants ought to be admitted to baptism as the fountain of 
life and the door of the church," and as insisting that 
those who had received baptism in infancy ought to " re- 
ceive baptism anew." After he has impressed upon his 
people the doctrine that baptism should be given not to 
crying babes but to believing adults, "he leads them to 
the river and immerses them." He claimed that these 
things were "the first rudiments of the ancient religion 
about to be restored," and maintained that he was acting 
under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. An associate 
of his, Goncozius by name, had written against the use 
of the sword in the spirit of the old-evangelical sects and 
of the Anti-pedobaptists in general. 

John a Lasco distinguishes between the religious con- 
dition of greater Poland, which borders on Silesia and 
Pomerania, where the " Waldensian Brethren " (Bohe- 
mian Brethren) are carefully guarding against the en- 
croachments of heresy, and lesser Poland, whose re- 
ligious condition owing to the prevalence of anti-trini- 
tarianism and Anti-pedobaptism was utterly deplorable. 1 

By 1574 the anti-trinitarian Anti-pedobaptists had be- 
come a vigorous and aggressive party in Poland and in 
Siebenbiirgen, closely connected with Poland and subject 
to the same influences. In 1574 a catechism was set 
forth in which baptism is restricted to adults and is de- 
fined as " the immersion in water and the emersion of a 
person who believes the gospel and repents, in the name 
of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or in the name of 
Christ only, whereby he publicly professes that by the 

1 Letter to Beza, May 30, 1566, in "Museum Helveticum," Part XIV., p. 282, seg. 



RACOVIAN CATECHISM 337 

grace of God the Father, in the blood of Christ, through 
the operation of the Holy Spirit, he is washed of all his 
sins, in order that being inserted into the body of Christ 
he may mortify the old Adam, and be transformed into 
that heavenly Adam, with the assurance that after the 
resurrection he will attain to eternal life." 1 The utmost 
stress is laid upon the exercise of church discipline as a 
means to the maintenance of the purity of the church. 

These anti-trinitarian Anti-pedobaptists were far re- 
moved from the religious indifferentism that has charac- 
terized much of the later Socinianism. They yielded to 
none in their zeal for the authority of Scripture and in 
their belief that in Christ and in him alone is salvation. 
Their view of the person of Christ, while wholly inade- 
quate from our point of view, was coupled with the pro- 
foundest reverence for Christ and the completest trust in 
him. In rejecting the Nicene and Athanasian symbols 
they misinterpreted the teachings of the New Testament 
itself with respect to the God-Man. Directing their 
attention chiefly to those passages in the New Testa- 
ment that seem to imply subordination they lost sight of, 
or misunderstood, those passages that identify the Son 
with the Father and imply his coequality and consub- 
stantiality. 

The " Racovian Catechism " was first issued in 1605, 2 
when anti-trinitarian Anti-pedobaptism had become the 
controlling type of Protestantism in Poland, when it had 
an efficient and largely attended college and a well- 
equipped publishing house at Racov, and when it enjoyed 
the support of some of the most powerful of the nobles. 
It had been prepared in part by Faustus Socinus ; but in 
many points it takes far more evangelical ground than 

1 See Foch, " Der Socinianismus," p. 152, seq., and Rees' historical introduction to 
his edition of the "Racovian Catechism," p. lxxi., seq. The catechism of 1574 is 
variously ascribed to George Schomann and to Gregorius Paulus. 

- Composed about 1590. 

W 



338 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

this great leader had taken in his published writings. 
The inspiration and authority of the Scriptures are vin- 
dicated in the most orthodox way. 

" The Lord Jesus "Js said to have " been conceived of the Holy 
Spirit and born of a virgin, without the intervention of any human 
being." He is spoken of as " from his earliest origin the only begotten 
Son of God." He is said to have " been sent by the Father, with 
supreme authority, on an embassy to mankind." " He was raised 
from the dead by God, and thus as it were begotten a second time. 
... By this event he became like God immortal." It is recognized 
that he possesses " dominion and supreme authority over all things." 
He is said to have been " not merely the only begotten Son of God, 
on account of the divine power and authority which he displayed 
even while he was yet mortal ; much more may he be so denominated 
now, that he has received all power in heaven and earth, and that 
all things, God himself alone excepted, have been put under his 
feet." 

Yet his coeternity and consubstantiality with the Father 
are explicitly denied. 
Baptism is defined to be, 

A rite of initiation whereby men, after admitting his doctrine and 
embracing faith in him, are bound to Christ and planted among his 
disciples, or in his church ; renouncing the world, with its manners 
and errors, and professing that they have for their sole leader and 
master in religion, and in the whole of their lives and conversations, 
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who spoke by the apostles : 
declaring, and as it were representing by their very ablution, im- 
mersion, and emersion, that they design to rid themselves of the pol- 
lution of their sins, to bury themselves with Christ, and therefore 
to die with him, and rise again to newness of life ; binding them- 
selves down, in order than they may do this in reality ; and at the 
same time, after making this profession and laying themselves 
under this obligation, receiving the symbol and the sign of the re- 
mission of their sins, and so far receiving the remission itself. 

As regards the subjects of baptism it is said : 

It does not pertain to infants, since we have in the Scriptures no 
command for, nor any example of, infant baptism, nor are they as 



INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH BAPTISTS 339 

yet capable, as the thing itself shows, of the faith in Christ, which 
ought to precede this rite, and which men profess by this rite. In 
answer to the question : " What then is to be thought of those who 
baptize infants? " it is replied : " You cannot correctly say that they 
baptize infants. For they do not baptize them— since this cannot be 
done without the immersion and ablution of the whole body in 
water ; whereas they only lightly sprinkle their heads— this rite be- 
ing not only erroneously applied to infants but also through this 
mistake, evidently changed." 

It should be said that Faustus Socinus did not see eye 
to eye with the majority of the Polish anti-trinitarians 
with respect to baptism. He denied that our Lord in- 
tended to enjoin the perpetual observance of this rite. 
It was intended only for those to whom the Commission 
was originally given. Refusing to receive baptism as a 
believer he was for many years excluded from the fel- 
lowship of the Polish churches that historically bear his 
name. 

The Polish anti-trinitarian Anti-pedobaptist movement 
is of great xnportance in Baptist history. From this 
party the English General Baptists derived much of their 
impulse, by it they have been greatly influenced, and 
between it and them there has always been a close 
affinity ; from it, through the Rhynsburgers, or Colle- 
giants, of Holland, the Particular Baptists of England 
seem to have derived their immersion (1641), having 
already come to the conviction that immersion and im- 
mersion only is New Testament baptism. 

Literature: Works of Socinus, Servetus, Czechowitz, Ottius, 
Wissowaty, Benrath, Trechsel, Foch, Sandius, Bock, Tollin, Gor- 
don, and the Racovian Catechism, as in the Bibliography. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

ENGLAND (to 1 5 58) 

EVANGELICAL Christianity, in the form of Lollard- 
ism, persisted in England and Scotland with con- 
siderable vigor until after the inauguration of the 
Protestant Revolution. Inquisitorial processes occurred 
from time to time from the time of Wycliffe onward. 

In a Lollard book, found in circulation, along with 
others, in 141 5, in the city of London, the pope is desig- 
nated "that wicked Antichrist," who "hath sowed 
among the laws of Christ his popish and corrupt de- 
crees"; the archbishops and bishops are said to be 
" seats of the beast Antichrist, when he sitteth in them, 
and reigneth above other people in the deep caves of 
errors and heresies." The bishop's license to preach 
is "the true character of the beast . . . and therefore 
simple and faithful priests may preach when they will, 
against the prohibition of that Antichrist, and without 
license." "The court of Rome is the chief head of 
Antichrist, and the bishops be the body ; and the new 
sects [monastic orders, etc.] brought in not by Christ, 
but damnably by the pope, be the venomous and pestif- 
erous tail of Antichrist." 

Regenerate church-membership is insisted upon. Or- 
namental church buildings are condemned. " The fol- 
lowers of the humility of Jesus Christ ought to worship 
their Lord God humbly, in mean and simple houses." 
" The often singing in the church is not founded on the 
Scripture, and therefore it is not lawful for priests to 
occupy themselves with singing in the church, but with 
the study of the law of Christ, and preaching his word." 
340 



LOLLARDS AND WALDENSES 341 

The memorial view of the Supper is strongly set forth 
in opposition to transubstantiation. Indulgences, priestly 
intercessions, pilgrimages, the veneration of images, and 
almsgiving as a meritorious work apart from the worthi- 
ness or the need of the object, are earnestly repudiated. 

The owner of this and other English evangelical books 
brought to light at this time was John Claydon, a pros- 
perous London currier, who was burned at Smithfield for 
his fidelity to principle. Many other heresy trials oc- 
curred at about this time. Lord Cobham, one of the 
noblest of martyrs, died at the stake in 1418. Between 
1428 and 1431 one hundred and twenty men and women 
in different parts of England were arraigned for Lollard- 
ism, and many remained faithful even unto death. 

Among the heresies brought to light in the various in- 
quisitorial processes besides those already given, were 
the denial of the special sanctity of any days except 
Sunday ; rejection of ecclesiastical fasts ; insistence that 
prayer is to be offered to God alone, with the rejection of 
Mariolatry and the veneration of saints, images, relics, 
holy places, etc. ; denial of the efficacy of offerings and 
intercessions for the dead ; denial of the doctrine of pur- 
gatory ; repudiation of ordinances administered by cor- 
rupt priests ; rejection of sacerdotal celibacy and strong 
conviction as to its ruinous effects ; repudiation of mo- 
nastic vows ; vigorous opposition to auricular confession; 
insistence on the utmost simplicity in living, luxury being 
regarded as contrary to the spirit of the gospel ; and in 
general the acceptance of apostolic precept and example 
as the norm of faith and life. In all this the Lollards 
were at one with the best evangelical life of the Con- 
tinent, and they seem to have been almost wholly free 
from the extravagancies that marred the teachings of 
some of the continental parties. 

The Lollards were in agreement with the Waldenses 



342 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

and related parties in their rejection of oaths, warfare, 
and capital punishment, though they seem to have placed 
less' emphasis upon this set of views than their conti- 
nental brethren. A Lollard party arraigned in 1428 was 
charged with maintaining " that it is not lawful to swear 
in private cases." This would seem to imply the lawful- 
ness of judicial oaths. But in another trial of the same 
year a Lollard woman is charged with exhorting vehe- 
mently against any sort of oath as venomous to the soul. 1 
As early as 1395 a large body of Lollards declared, in a 
memorial to Parliament : 2 "Manslaughter by war or pre- 
tended law of justice for any temporal cause, without a 
spiritual revelation, is expressly contrary to the New 
Testament, which is a law of grace and full of mercy." 

As regards the ordinances they repudiated with the 
utmost decision the Roman Catholic view of the magical 
efficacy of priestly consecration, insisted that the Supper 
is a memorial rite, denied the necessity of baptism to sal- 
vation, and in general closely approached the Baptist 
position. Yet diligent research has failed to discover any 
case of Anti-pedobaptism among the English evangelicals 
before the incoming of Anti-pedobaptists from the Con- 
tinent (1530 onward). While it would be rash to assert 
that these views, so common on the Continent during 
the later Middle Ages, had no representatives in England 
at that time, documentary materials thus far available 
by no means warrant a contrary assertion. 

The fact is that the extant materials for the history of 
English evangelical life during the mediaeval and early 
Reformation times are meagre and unsatisfactory. This 
is no doubt largely due to the happy circumstance that 
the Inquisition proper was never established in England, 
and that the systematic and persistent efforts of skilled 
detectives, examiners, and recorders, to which we are 

1 Foxe, Vol. III., p. 549. "- Lechler's " Wycliffe," p. 448. 



THE LOLLARDS OF KYLE 343 

largely indebted for the fullness of our information about 
the Waldenses and related bodies, were wanting here. 
We have reason to suspect that there was in England 
during the later Middle Ages vastly more of evangelical 
life than came into publicity ; we may regard it as prob- 
able that some at least of those who had so firm a grasp 
of apostolic Christianity were not content with denying 
the magical efficacy of water baptism and asserting that 
unbaptized infants are saved, but went on to insist upon 
believers' baptism. Yet we must beware of asserting 
that such was the case. 

To show that at the beginning of the Protestant Revo- 
lution Lollardism had lost nothing in clearness of view, 
strength of conviction, and aggressive opposition to the 
hierarchy, a Scotch and an English case may be cited. 
In 1494 the " Lollards of Kyle," to the number of thirty, 
were arraigned before the archbishop of Glasgow. 1 
The list includes such names as Campbell, Shaw, 
Chalmers, Cunningham, and Reid. The charges against 
them, the correctness of which we have no reason to 
question, embraced nearly all of the views attributed to 
the earlier Lollards expressed with Scotch vigor. It is 
interesting to note their close adherence to old-evan- 
gelical traditions with respect to oaths, magistracy, war- 
fare, etc. : " It is not lawful to fight or to defend the 
faith"; "Christ at his coming has taken away power 
from kings to judge " [in religious matters, was no doubt 
meant] ; " In no case is it lawful to swear." Other strik- 
ing statements are : "The pope is not the successor of 
Peter, but where he [Christ] said, Get thee behind me, 
Satan" ; "The pope is the head of the church of Anti- 
christ " ; " The pope and his ministers are murderers " ; 
"Every faithful man or woman is a priest"; "True 
Christians receive the body of Jesus Christ every day." 

1 Knox, "Reformation," Vol. I., p. 7, seq. 



344 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

As it is not to be supposed that the Lollards of Kyle 
were without fellow-believers in various parts of Scot- 
land; a knowledge of their sturdiness and aggressiveness 
helps us not a little to understand the rapidity with 
which a little later popery gave place to a thorough-going 
type of Protestantism. 

From 1 5 10 to 1 527 forty Lollards were arraigned by the 
Bishop of London alone. Among the most noted of these 
was Richard Hun (15 14), a man of intelligence and sub- 
stance. He is charged with having "read, taught, 
preached, published, and obstinately defended, that 
bishops and priests be the scribes and Pharisees that 
did crucify Christ," that "bishops and priests be teach- 
ers and preachers, but no doers, neither fulfillers of the 
law of God ; but catching, ravening, and all things tak- 
ing, and nothing ministering, neither giving"; with 
"keeping divers English books prohibited and damned 
by law, as the Apocalypse in English, Epistles and Gos- 
pels in English, Wycliffe's damnable works," etc. ; with 
defending "the translation of the Bible and the holy 
Scripture into the English tongue, which is prohibited by 
the laws of our mother, holy church " ; with saying 
that "kings and lords, called Christian in name and 
heathen in conditions, defile the sanctuary of God, 
bringing clerks full of covetousness, heresy, and malice, 
to stop God's law, that it cannot be known, kept, and 
freely preached"; with damning "the University of 
Oxford, with all degrees and faculties in it . . . saying 
that they hinder the true way to come to the knowledge 
of the laws of God and Holy Scripture "; and with say- 
ing that " the very body of the Lord is not contained in 
the sacrament of the altar, but that men receiving it 
shall thereby keep in mind that Christ's flesh was 
wounded and crucified for us." 1 

iFoxe, Vol. IV., pp. 183-6. 



DUTCH IMMIGRATION 345 

It is natural to suppose that many of those who came 
forward as aggressive evangelicals under Henry VIII. had 
been under the influence of this older evangelical party. 
We should not expect here, anymore than on the Conti- 
nent, evidence of the passing over of individuals from 
the older to the newer forms of evangelicalism ; but the 
speedy disappearance of the older form after the intro- 
duction of the newer is sufficient proof of the fact. 

We are safe in saying that the deeply rooted prin- 
ciples of Lollardism lay at the basis of the Puritanism 
and the Independency of the later time, and along with 
other circumstances help us to account for the wide- 
spread acceptance of radical types of evangelicalism under 
Elizabeth and the Stuarts. The persistent influence of 
the older Lollardism could hardly have failed to co-oper- 
ate to a greater or less extent with the foreign Anti-pedo- 
baptist teaching that appeared in England about 1530 
and was from this time onward always active. 

The early persecutions in the Spanish Netherlands 
under Charles V. and the encouragement given to manu- 
facturing enterprise by Henry VIII. caused a large immi- 
gration of Dutch artisans to England (1528 onward). 
By 1560 there were in England about ten thousand 
Dutch, and two years later the number had increased 
threefold. The Duke of Alva's persecutions (1568-73) 
raised the number to at least fifty thousand. There 
were many thousands of Dutch in London at this time. 
A majority of the population of the manufacturing city 
of Norwich in 1587 were Dutch and Walloons. Dover, 
Romney, Sandwich, Canterbury, Colchester, Hastings, 
and Hythe, had each a large Dutch population. 1 The 
great majority of these were Calvinists, who were toler- 
ated by the government and had their own churches and 
pastors ; but a considerable proportion were certainly 

1 Green, "History of the English People," Book VI., Chap. V. 



346 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Anti-pedobaptists, at first of the Hofmannite and later 
of the Mennonite type. The English, up to the time of 
the Dutch immigration, knew little of manufacturing, and 
the incoming of this large artisan population was an im- 
portant source of wealth to the country. 

A large proportion of the business men of Antwerp 
settled in London after the fall of their city (1576). The 
Dutch were at this time among the most highly educated 
people in the world. Ideas of civil and religious liberty 
had reached a degree of maturity in the Netherlands un- 
known elsewhere. It would be difficult to overestimate 
the extent of the wholesome influence exerted by the 
large body of intelligent Dutch refugees upon the politi- 
cal and religious thought of England. Dutch influence 
reached England in other ways as well. Both before 
and during the Spanish wars many Englishmen resided 
for longer or shorter periods in the Netherlands and there 
became imbued with Dutch ideas. 

The first public notice of the presence of foreign Anti- 
pedobaptists in England is contained in a royal proclama- 
tion of 1534 : 

Forasmuch as divers and sundry strangers of the sect and false 
opinion of the Anabaptists and Sacramentaries (Zwinglians), being 
lately come into this realm, where they lurk secretly in divers cor- 
ners and places, minding craftily and subtilly to provoke and stir the 
king's loving subjects to their errors and opinions, whereof part of 
them, by the great travail and diligence of the king's highness and 
his council, be apprehended and taken, the king's most royal ma- 
jesty declareth . . . that he abhorreth and detesteth the same sects 
and their wicked and abominable errors and opinions, and intendeth 
to proceed against such of them as be already apprehended. 

All who had not been found were commanded to de- 
part the realm within eight or ten days. 1 

This was followed by another proclamation, in which 

1 Wilkins, "Cone," Vol. III., p. 777. 



RADICAL EVANGELICALISM 347 

the king complains that many strangers who, condemn- 
ing the holy sacrament that they had received in infancy, 
had presumptuously rebaptized themselves, had entered 
the realm, and were spreading everywhere their pesti- 
lent heresies "against God and his Holy Scriptures to 
the great unquietness of Christendom and perdition of 
innumerable Christian souls." Many have been con- 
\icted " and have and shall for the same suffer the pains 
of death." All such heretics are ordered to leave the 
realm in twelve days " on pain to suffer death " in case 
they be apprehended after the prescribed date. 

It is evident that Anti-pedobaptists were at this time 
somewhat numerous and very aggressive in England. 

There is no sufficient reason for regarding James Bain- 
ham, a barrister, who suffered martyrdom for his radical 
evangelical views in 1534 as an Anti-Pedobaptist. Like 
the Lollards and the Zwinglians he denied with great 
emphasis the necessity and the magical efficacy of water 
baptism and insisted upon repentance and faith as condi- 
tions of salvation. 

Neither are we to regard the Lollard books that were 
condemned about this time, along with Tyndale's New 
Testament, as distinctively Anti-pedobaptist. The radical 
evangelicalism of Tyndale and Fryth had much in common 
with English Lollardism and with the old-evangelical 
position in general, as well as with the position of the 
early Anti-pedobaptists of the continent ; but the same 
may be said with reference to many of the earlier writ- 
ings of Luther, Zwingli, OEcolampadius, etc. A writer 
is not necessarily a Baptist for saying : " The water of the 
font has no more virtue in it than the water of the river ; 
the baptism lies not in hallowed water, or in any out- 
ward thing, but in the faith only ; " l or, " The water of 
baptism is nothing but a sign that we must be under the 

1 " The Sum of Scripture," fol. 6. 



348 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

standard of the cross;" 1 or, "Men of war are not 
allowed by the gospel ; the gospel knows peace and not 
war. . . Some texts of the canon suffer war, but the 
teaching of Christ forbids war;" 2 or, " The gospel 
makes all true Christian men servants to all the world " ; 3 
or, " Christian men, among themselves, have nought to 
do with the sword, nor with 'the law, for that is to them 
neither needful nor profitable " ; 4 or, " A true Christian 
man never plaineth to the judge of the injury that is 
done unto him "; 5 or, "The worst Turk living has as 
much right to my goods at his need as my own household 
or myself " ; 6 or, " Every man is lord of another man's 
goods. I am bound to love the Turk with the very bot- 
tom of my heart " ; or, "Whosoever first ordained uni- 
versities . . . was a star that fell from heaven to earth ; 
there are brought in moral virtues for faith and opinions 
for truth. . . The universities are the confused cloud 
and open gate of hell, and this cloak of all other is most 
noisome, and does most hurt and damage." 7 These 
quotations represent a strongly mystical type of old- 
evangelical teaching and the authors of the books cited 
may have been Anti-pedobaptist, but of this we have no 
evidence. 8 

In 1535 we have a definite account of the arrest, trial, 
and burning of some Dutch Anti-pedobaptists. Accord- 
ing to a contemporary chronicler : 9 

The five and twentieth day of May (1535) were in St. Paul's 
Church, London, examined nineteen men and six women, born in 
Holland, whose opinions were — first, that in Christ is not two na- 

1 "The Sum of Scripture," fol. 12. 2 Ibid, fol. 116 and 118. 3 Ibid, fol. no. 

4 Ibid, fol. no. 5 Ibid, fol. 113. 6 " Wicked Mammon." 

7 "The Revelation of Antichrist," fol. 31, 32, 33. 

8 These books seem to have been written or edited by Tyndale. The quotations 

are given in the garbled form in which they were brought forward by the inquisitors. 

Foxe gives the passages in full along with these abstracts (" Actes and Monuments," 

V., 570, seq.) 

9 Stow, p. 571. 



PERSECUTION OF ANABAPTISTS 349 

tures, God and man ; secondly, that Christ took neither flesh nor 
blood of the Virgin Mary : thirdly, that children born of infidels may 
be saved ; fourthly, that baptism of children is of none effect ; 
fifthly, that the sacrament of Christ's body is but bread only ; 
sixthly, that he who after baptism sinneth wittingly, sinneth deadly, 
and cannot be saved. Fourteen of them were condemned, a man 
and woman were burnt at Smithfield. The remaining twelve were 
scattered among the towns there to be burnt. 

These can have been no other than disciples of Mel- 
chior Hofmann, some of whose characteristic views, as 
on the incarnation, are here somewhat inaccurately set 
forth. 

In 1538 Philip of Hesse wrote to Henry VIII., whose 
alliance with the Protestant princes of Germany was at 
that time being earnestly sought, informing him that an 
Anabaptist named Peter Tasch had recently been 
arrested, on whose person was found correspondence 
with brethren in England, From the correspondence 
it appeared that one of the latter had recently published 
a book on the incarnation which it was hoped would aid 
much in disseminating true doctrine. Tasch himself 
was planning to join his brethren in England. Philip, 
who was noted for his tolerant disposition, was too 
anxious to gain the good will of Henry to withhold this 
interesting bit of information. He even went so far as 
to represent the sectaries in the most unfavorable light. 
Henry did not require much stimulus in the direction of 
intolerance. On October 1 he ordered Cranmer and a 
number of his clerical colleagues to make a rigorous 
search for Anabaptists, their books and their correspond- 
ence. Such as should recant were to be liberated ; such 
as should prove obstinate were to be burned along with 
their writings. 1 On November 16 the king issued a fresh 
proclamation against the importation or printing of un- 
licensed books and ordering the burning of the books of 

1 Wilkins' "Cone," Vol. III., pp. 836-7. 



350 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Anabaptists and Sacramentaries. A few days later a 
number of arrests were made and two, a man and 
a woman, were burned at Smithfield. 

In December the king issued a letter to the justices of 
the peace throughout England urging the utmost rigor 
against Anabaptists. Many fled to Holland. On Jan- 
uary 5 thirty-one of them were beheaded at Delft, where 
a few months before twenty-seven of their brethren had 
died for their faith. 

Violent measures having proved ineffective, it occurred 
to the king to issue a proclamation of grace to such as 
had been misled by "certain Anabaptists and Sacra- 
mentaries, coming out of outward parts into this realm " 
through "divers and many perverse and crafty means," 
and who " now be sorry for their offenses and minding 
fully to return again to the Catholic Church." "The 
king's highness like a most loving parent much moved 
with pity, tendering the winning of them again to 
Christ's flock, and much lamenting also their simplicity, 
so by devilish craft circumscribed ... of his inestimable 
goodness, pity, and clemency, is content to remit, pardon, 
and forgive ... all and singular such persons," etc. 
Yet if any in future " fall to any such detestable and 
damnable opinions," the laws will be mercilessly en- 
forced against them. 

This proclamation affords evidence of the most con- 
vincing kind of the numbers and aggressiveness of Anti- 
pedobaptism in England at this time and of the fact that 
these teachings were spreading among the native popula- 
tion. 

In 1540 the king issued a general pardon to those who 
had religiously offended, but made a special exception 
against such as maintained that " infants ought not to be 
baptized," that "it is not lawful for a Christian man to 
bear office or rule in the commonwealth," that "every 



CRANMER AND FOREIGN THEOLOGIANS 35 1 

manner of death, with the time and hour thereof, is so 
certainly prescribed, appointed, and determined to every 
man by God, that neither any prince by his word can 
alter it, nor any man by his willfulness prevent or 
change it." This last specification does not strike one as 
characteristic of the Anti-pedobaptist teaching of the 
time, which made much of free-will. 

There is no adequate reason for regarding Anne 
Askew, a gentlewoman of Lincolnshire, who was burned 
after suffering cruel tortures in 1546 because of her zeal 
against transubstantiation, as a Baptist, or even as an 
Anti-pedobaptist. Her intense antipathy to popish cere- 
monialism would seem to connect her with the earlier 
Lollardism ; but Calvinism had become fully developed 
by this time and her zeal may have been of the Calvin- 
istic type. Her profound knowledge of the Scriptures 
and her mastery of the arts of polemics would seem to 
show that she not only possessed intellectual powers of a 
very high order but that she had enjoyed educational ad- 
vantages beyond what was usual for women at that 
time. She was far more than a match for the bishops in 
argument ; but her repartees were sharper by far than 
good judgment would have dictated. There is no hint in 
contemporary literature that she held to any of the dis- 
tinctive views of the hated Anti-pedobaptists. 

Edward VI., son of Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour, 
ascended the throne when only ten years of age. He 
had been brought up under Protestant influence and his 
advisers were favorable to the complete abolition of 
Roman Catholicism. Cranmer had by this time come to 
be a thorough-going Protestant of the Melancthon type, 
and his influence as primate and religious director of the 
young king was paramount. A number of leading Prot- 
estant theologians of the Continent were prevailed upon 
to take up their abode in England and to assist in the work 



352 A HISTORY OF ANT1-PEDOBAPTISM 

of shaping the polity of the English church. Among the 
most noted of these were Bullinger, Zwingli's successor 
at Zurich ; Peter Martyr, a learned Italian, who had for 
years been associated with the Swiss Protestants ; Martin 
Bucer, the great Strasburg theologian, who had labored 
zealously for the conciliation of Lutheranism and Zwing- 
lianism and whose position was essentially Melanctho- 
nian ; John a Lasco, an eminent Polish theologian of 
noble birth, who also represented a moderate type of 
Protestant theology; and Bernardo Ochino who, as Vicar- 
General of the Capuchins, had attained to a reputation 
as a pulpit orator almost equal to that of Savonarola in 
the earlier time, and having been converted to Protestant- 
ism in 1542, had since lived as an exile in Geneva and 
elsewhere. 

It might have been expected that Cranmer's liberal 
programme would embrace toleration for evangelicals 
of a more radical type ; but these liberal theologians 
were for the most part deeply prejudiced against the 
Anti-pedobaptists, with whose exclusive and uncom- 
promising adherence to their principles they had had un- 
pleasant experience. Bullinger had taken a foremost 
part in their exclusion from Switzerland and was to write 
voluminously against them. Of Bucer's increasing dis- 
like for them we have had abundant evidence. Cran- 
mer's father-in-law, Osiander of Niirnberg, was one of the 
earliest and most uncompromising opponents of Anti-pe- 
dobaptism. It was the conviction of all the leaders that 
the toleration of Anabaptists would imperil every social, 
religious, and civil institution, and that they must be ex- 
cluded at whatever cost. 

In 1547 an Anti-pedobaptist named Robert Cooke be- 
came a member of the court of Edward VI. as keeper of 
the royal wine cellar. He had spent considerable time in 
Switzerland, and was learned and accomplished. Be- 



COOKE AND TURNER 353 

sides opposing the baptism of infants, he is said to have 
held to Pelagian views on original sin and related doc- 
trines. Skillful and aggressive in debate, he gave vast 
trouble to such court preachers as Coverdale, Turner, 
Parkhurst, and Jewel. 

Turner was incited by Cooke's polemics to write "A 
Preservative, or Triacle, against the Poison of Pelagius 
lately renewed and stirred up again by the furious Sect 
of the Anabaptists " (15 51). He quotes the opinions of 
his opponents (no doubt having Cooke's arguments in 
mind) on original sin and infant baptism in their relations 
to each other : 

By baptism alone is no salvation, but by baptism and preaching ; 
and certain it is that God is able to save his chosen church without 
these means. But this is his ordinary way to save and damn the 
whole world, namely, by offering remission of sins and baptism to all 
the world, that thereby the believers may be absolved from all con- 
science of sin, and the disobedient and unbelievers bound still either 
to amend or to be damned. 

Again : 

The remission of sins is offered to all, but all receive it not ; the 
church sanctified by faith in the blood of Christ only receiveth, and 
unto them only baptism belongeth. Therefore none ought to receive 
it but such as have not only heard the good promises of God, but have 
also thereby received a singular consolation in their hearts, through 
remission of sin, which they by faith have received. For if any re- 
ceive baptism without this persuasion, it profits them nothing. 

Again : 

All the world hath sinned and is defiled in Adam. How, now, will 
water scour away the filth of this corruption ? No ; it is a wound re- 
ceived in the soul, and is washed away but with the only faith in 
the blood of Christ. 

The Pelagianism here set forth is certainly of a very 
mild type, and the theory of baptism is quite in accord 
with the Baptist position. 



354 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

Cooke was induced so far to withdraw his offensive 
opinions as to obviate the necessity of abandoning his 
position in the court. As late as 1573 we find him acting 
as one of the gentlemen of the queen's chapel. 

In 1547 Ridley and Latimer were appointed to deal 
with certain Anti-pedobaptists in Kent, where many 
Dutch had settled. 

After the rebellion of 1549 Parliament passed an act of 
grace and general pardon ; but those were expressly ex- 
cepted who held : " That infants were not to be baptized ; 
and if they were baptized, that they ought to be rebap- 
tized when they came to lawful age ; that it was not 
lawful for a Christian man to bear office or rule in the 
commonwealth ; that no men's laws ought to be obeyed ; 
that it was not lawful for a Christian man to take an oath 
before any judge ; that Christ took not his substance of 
our blessed Lady ; that sinners after baptism could not 
be restored by repentance ; that all things be or ought to 
be common, and nothing several." 1 

Early in 1549 an ecclesiastical commission was ap- 
pointed, consisting of Archbishop Cranmer, Bishop Rid- 
ley, and a number of other prominent prelates and 
statesmen, with full powers to search out and punish 
Anabaptist and Arian heresy. At about this time a 
translation of a violent polemic against the Anabaptists, 
ascribed to Calvin, was published in England. The ef- 
fect of it could only be to sharpen the zeal of churchmen 
and statesmen against the sect already sufficiently ab- 
horred. 

There is some reason for suspecting that Joan Boucher, 
of Kent, who suffered martyrdom in 1550 for persistently 
denying that our Lord derived his flesh from Mary, was 
an Anti-pedobaptist. This Hofmannite view seems to 
have been almost universally maintained by Dutch-Eng- 

1 Strype, "Mem." II. i, 291. 



JOAN BOUCHER 355 

lish Anti-pedobaptists and is not often encountered out- 
side of this circle. She devoted herself assiduously to 
the secret circulation of Tyndale's New Testament and 
other religious books of an evangelical character. She is 
said to have enjoyed the friendship of Anne Askew and 
she had much in common with that heroic woman. 
Though illiterate, she was well versed in Scripture and 
was able to hold her own in argument with the learned 
prelates of the day. Like Anne Askew she gave need- 
less offense by the harshness of her denunciations and 
the sharpness of her repartees. 

Her manner of putting the Hofmannite doctrine of the 
incarnation is interesting : 

I deny not Christ is Mary's seed, or the woman's seed ; nor do I 
deny him to be a man. But Mary had two seeds— one seed of her 
faith, and another seed of her flesh and in her body. There is a 
natural and a corporeal seed, and there is a spiritual and an heavenly 
seed. . . And Christ is her seed ; but he is become man of the seed 
of her faith and belief — of spiritual seed, not of natural seed ; for her 
seed was sinful, as the seed and flesh of others. 

Every effort was made by Ridley and others to per- 
suade her to purchase her life by denying her faith on 
this point ; but she was as firm as a rock. " It was not 
long ago," she said, "since you burnt Anne Askew for 
a piece of bread, yet came yourself to believe the doc- 
trine for which you have burnt her ; and now you will 
burn me for a piece of flesh, and in the end you will be- 
lieve this also." 

Little reliance can be placed on the tradition of the 
little Baptist church at Eythorne in Kent that its history 
as a Baptist church antedates the martyrdom of Joan 
Boucher and that she was a member. Of course it is 
possible that this and some other of the English Baptist 
churches that claim a very early date grew out of Dutch- 
English Anti-pedobaptist congregations of the sixteenth 



356 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

century, or out of still older Lollard congregations ; but the 
evidence in no case seems complete. A critical investi- 
gation of the claims of these churches is a desideratum. 

Kent continued to give much anxiety to the authorities 
on account of the continuance there of Anti-pedobaptist 
activity. The Bishop of Winchester (Gardiner) had to 
betaken severely to task on account of his lukewarmness 
in extirpating heresy. John Knox was highly recom- 
mended for the bishopric of Rochester "because he 
would be a great confounder of the Anabaptists lately 
springing up in Kent." Congregations, Anabaptist or 
Pelagian, or both, were discovered about this time in 
Essex and Kent. Many of their members were arrested 
and tried, but chief stress was laid on their free-will 
teaching and rejection of the doctrine of original sin. 

Under Queen Mary (1553-8) Roman Catholicism was 
re-established and all forms of evangelical life were under 
the ban. Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, who had been 
so zealous for the burning of Anabaptists, themselves 
suffered at the stake. The government was so much 
occupied with larger game that the obscure Anti-pedo- 
baptists were no doubt to some extent overlooked. It 
may be that they suffered less under "bloody Mary" 
than under the gentle, evangelical Edward. 

Literature: Underhill, " Introduction to the Hanserd Knollys Soc. 
Pub." ; Crosby, " Hist, of the Eng. Baptists," Vol. I. ; Ivimey, 
" Hist, of the Eng. Baptists," Vol. I. ; Evans, " Early Eng. Bap- 
tists," Vol. I. ; Goadby, " By-Paths of Bapt. Hist." ; Strype (vari- 
ous works) ; Foxe, "Actes and Monuments " ; Fuller, " Ch. Hist." ; 
Collier, " Eccl. Hist." ; D'Anvers, " Treatise on Baptism " ; Burnet, 
" Hist, of the Ref." ; Knox, works, ed. Laing ; Tyndale, works; 
Van Braght, " Bloedig Toneel"; Wilkins, " Concilia Mag. Br."; 
Walker, " Creeds and Platforms " and " Hist, of the Congreg. Ch. 
in the U. S." ; Campbell, " The Puritans" ; Hanbury, " Hist. Me- 
morials" ; and Dexter, "The Congregationalism of the Last Three 
Hundred Years." 



CHAPTER XXVII 
ENGLAND (1558-1602) 

AT the beginning of her glorious reign, Elizabeth de- 
termined on political and other grounds to establish 
a Protestant form of religion ; but the limits of toleration 
were sharply defined and an act of uniformity rigorously 
enforced. The great majority of the educated and in- 
fluential churchmen who served Elizabeth had been 
trained, during the era of Mary, in the most rigorous form 
of Protestantism and would have preferred a Presby- 
terian establishment ; but the will of the queen was 
supreme and great theologians were obliged to swallow 
their convictions as to what was best and content them- 
selves with what was practicable. The idea of toleration 
was as foreign to the Calvinistic divines as to the Tudor 
queen. Only a few years before, the great Calvin had 
compassed and gloried in the burning of Servetus, and 
Theodore Beza, his colleague and successor, had recently 
written an atrocious work in favor of the punishment of 
heretics by the civil magistracy. 

In 1560 John Knox, the great Scottish reformer, who 
had become noted during his English ministry under Ed- 
ward VI. for his zeal against Anabaptists, published " An 
Answer to a Great Number of Blasphemous Cavillations 
Written by an Anabaptist, an Adversary to God's Eternal 
Predestination." The author of the book attacked was 
a former friend of Knox. 

The spirit of the Anti-pedobaptist work may be judged 
from the following extracts : 

Your chief Apollos be persecutors, on whom the blood of Servetus 
crieth a vengeance, so doth the blood of others more whom I could 

357 



358 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

name. But forasmuch as God has already partly avenged their 
blood [referring, no doubt, to the burning of Cranmer, Ridley, etc., 
who had themselves been arch-persecutors], and served some of 
their" persecutors with the same measure wherewith they measured 
to others, I will make no mention of them at this time. And to de- 
clare their wickedness not to have proceeded of ignorance and 
human infirmity, but of endured malice, they have for a perpetual 
memory of their cruelty, set forth books, affirming it to be lawful to 
persecute and put to death such as dissent from others in contro- 
versies of religion, whom they call blasphemers of God. Notwith- 
standing, afore they came to authority, they were of another judg- 
ment, and did both say and write, that no man ought to be perse- 
cuted for his conscience' sake ; but now they are not only become 
persecutors, but also they have given, as far as lieth in them, the 
sword into the hand of bloody tyrants. Be these, I pray you, the 
sheep whom Christ sent forth in the midst of wolves? Can the 
sheep persecute the wolf? Doth Abel kill Cain? Doth David, 
though he might, kill Saul? Shortly, doth he which is born of the 
Spirit kill him which is born after the flesh? Mark, how ye be 
fallen into most abominable tyranny, and yet ye see it not. Thus 
I am constrained of conscience to write. That if it shall please God 
to awake you out of your dream, that ye may perceive how one 
error hath drowned you in more error, and hath brought you to a 
sleeping security, that when ye walk, even after the lusts, thirsting 
after blood, and persecuting poor men for their conscience' sake, ye 
be blinded, and see not yourselves, but say, " Tush ! we be predesti- 
nate ; whatsoever we do we are certain we cannot fall out of God's 
favor." l 

This Anti-pedobaptist writer seems to have maintained 
that there was a logical connection between the Calvin- 
istic theology, with its predestinarianism, and the perse- 
cuting spirit which in that age everywhere characterized 
the great Reformed body. 

Knox answered this plain-spoken warning with reviling 
and threats rather than with argument : 

You dissembling hypocrites cannot abide that the sword of God's 
vengeance shall strike the murderer, the blasphemer, and such others 

Quoted by Underhill in his "Historical Introduction." 



ENFORCEMENT OF UNIFORMITY 359 

as God commandeth by his word to die ; not so, by your judg- 
ments ; he must live, and may repent. 

He accuses his opponent of blasphemy for suggesting 
that God had taken vengeance on Cranmer and others 
for persecuting his saints. 

I will not now so much labor to confute by my pen, as that my 
full purpose is to lay the same to thy charge, if I shall apprehend 
thee in any commonwealth where justice against blasphemers may be 
ministered, as God's word requireth. And hereof I give thee warn- 
ing, lest that after thou shalt complain that under the cloak of friend- 
ship I have deceived thee. Thy manifest defection from God, and 
this thy open blasphemy . . . have so broken and dissolved all 
familiarity which hath been betwixt us, that although thou wert my 
natural brother, 1 durst not conceal thine iniquity in this case. 

He proceeds to justify the burning of Servetus and 
Joan Boucher by referring to Old Testament examples 
of the capital punishment of idolaters, etc.: "Your 
privy assemblies, and all those that in despite of Christ's 
blessed ordinance do frequent the same, are accursed of 
God." 

From the above quotation it is manifest that Robert 
Browne was by no means the first to advocate in Britain 
the doctrine of soul-liberty. This writer deserves to be 
put by the' side of Hubmaier in the early part of the fif- 
teenth century, of the General Baptist authors of the 
tracts on liberty of conscience in the early part of the 
seventeenth century, and of Roger Williams and John 
Clarke a generation later, as one of the noble Anti-pedo- 
baptist advocates of separation of Church and State and 
absolute freedom of conscience. 

Referring to the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, Jewel 
wrote: 1 "We found a large and inauspicious crop of 
Arians, Anabaptists, and other pests, which I know not 

1 Ziirich Letters, Vol. I , p. q2. 



360 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

how, but as mushrooms spring up in the night and in 
darkness, so these sprung up in that darkness and un- 
happy night of the Marian times." There was at this 
time a great outcry from pulpit and press against the sec- 
taries, chief stress being put upon their anti-Calvinistic 
teachings. In 1559 it was seriously proposed to imprison 
"incorrigible Arians, Pelagians, or free-will men" in 
" some castle in North Wales, or Wallingford . . . there 
to live of their own labor and exercise, and none other 
be suffered to resort unto them but their keepers." 

Parkhurst, bishop of Norwich, was severely repri- 
manded for his failure to clear his diocese of Anti-pedo- 
baptists. Norwich, as has been stated, was a great 
resort of Dutch immigrants and the Anti-pedobaptist ele- 
ment was large and aggressive. 

In 1560 Elizabeth reinforced the Act of Uniformity by 
a special order to heretics (Anabaptists, etc.,) to depart 
the realm within twenty-one days on pain of imprison- 
ment and forfeiture of goods. In the same year an 
anonymous supplication on behalf of those thus cruelly 
threatened for permission freely to exercise their re- 
ligion was addressed to Bishop Grindal, of London. 
He suspected Hadrian Hamsted, one of the ministers 
of the Dutch church in London, of being its author, 
and addressed a letter to the Dutch ministers regarding 
the matter. Hamsted, when summoned before the 
bishop, acknowledged that he had spoken in a tolerant 
way of the error of the Anabaptists on the incarnation. 
The maintenance of such views he had held to be no bar 
to fellowship. Quarreling over such matters he had 
compared publicly to the disputing of the Roman soldiers 
over Christ's garments. Such errors he had said were 
as the wood, hay, and stubble, which would be con- 
sumed ; but the souls of those who held them might be 
saved so as by fire. He had also advocated freedom on 



PERSECUTION 361 

the part of parents to withhold their infants from bap- 
tism, or to present them, according to the dictates of con- 
science. Hamsted was deposed from his ministry by the 
bishop and soon afterward left England. Yet the matter 
of infant baptism continued to be agitated in the Dutch 
church, and the services of the bishop were four years 
later again called into requisition. 

In 1567 the government ordered an inquisition to be 
made, especially in the diocese of Norwich whose bishop 
was suspected of winking at schismatics and Anabaptists, 
as to the character of the religious instruction imparted 
in the schools and as to the manner in which function- 
aries of the church were performing their duties. Special 
inquiry was to be made as to whether any taught or 
said that children being infants ought not to be baptized, 
that post-baptismal sins were not remissible by penance, 
that it was not lawful to swear, that civil magistrates 
may not punish certain crimes with death, or that it was 
lawful for any man without the appointment and calling 
of the magistrate to take upon him any ministry in 
Christ's church. 1 

The year 1568 was still more trying to the authorities. 
Vast numbers of Dutch were at this time fleeing before 
the fury of Alva and it was feared that among them 
might be " Anabaptists and such other sectaries." The 
government now ordered a special visitation to be made in 
all communities of foreigners with a view to ascertaining 
their mode of life, the length of their residence, the cause 
of their coming, the churches they attended, etc. All 
suspected persons were to be arraigned and those found 
guilty of erroneous teaching, unless they should yield to 
"charitable teaching," were to be compelled to depart 
the realm within twenty days or to expect severer pun- 
ishment. Many Dutch Anabaptists are said to have been 

1 Underhill, "Hist. Introd. Broadm. Rec," p. 53. 



362 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

holding private conventicles in London at this time and 
to have perverted a large number of citizens. 1 

In "1572 Whitgift published, from Continental sources, 
a highly unfavorable account of the Anabaptists, the 
horrors of the Peasants' War and of the Munster King- 
dom being represented as due wholly to their baneful 
teachings and as samples of what might be expected 
in England if such heresy were not remorselessly sup- 
pressed. For more than a century English Anti-pedo- 
baptists had to bear the fearful burden of such obloquy, 
which from time to time was reiterated in the most un- 
scrupulous and sensational way. 

A body of dissenters discovered in the isle of Ely in 
1573 had most of the peculiarities of the Anti-pedobap- 
tists of the time, although rejection of infant baptism is 
not specifically charged. 

On Easter-day, 1575, about thirty Dutch Anti-pedo- 
baptists were seized in the suburbs of London while hold- 
ing religious services in a private house. They were 
released on bail, but about the beginning of May were 
summoned before a royal commission, consisting of Bishop 
Sandys and a number of civilians and judges. Several 
Dutch ministers and a French Protestant minister were 
invited to sit with the commission. 

Four questions were propounded to the accused : " (1) 
Whether Christ had not taken his flesh and blood of the 
Virgin Mary ? (2) Ought not little children to be bap- 
tized ? (3) May a Christian serve the office of a magis- 
trate ? (4) Whether a Christian, if needs be, may not 
swear ? " The fullest accounts of these examinations 
have been left us by members of the accused party. 
To question 1. they answered: "He (Christ) is the 
Son of the living God." Question 2, they answered 
with a straight negation. Their answer to question 3 

1 Collier, Vol. VI., p. 462, and Strype, " Parker," Vol. I., p. 522. 



PERSECUTION 363 

was somewhat ambiguous : " That it did not oblige their 
consciences, but as they read, they esteemed it an or- 
dinance of God." Their view on this point was evidently 
that of the great Anti-pedobaptist brotherhood of the 
sixteenth century. Their answer to question 4 was : 
" That it also obliged not their consciences ; for Christ 
has said in Matthew, ' Let your words be yea, yea ; nay, 
nay.' " Here also their position is manifest. 

When they had given their answers the bishop de- 
clared that their misdeeds were so great that they could 
not enjoy the favor of God. They were informed that 
the queen and her council were resolved to compel all 
strangers to renounce these articles. If they would com- 
ply with this requirement, they might remain in the land 
free from taxes ; if not, a frightful death awaited them. 

There was no desire on the part of Elizabeth or her 
advisers to relight the fires of Smithfield, but Anabaptist 
heresy was too dangerous a thing to be tolerated. If it 
could be exterminated without bloodshed, so much the 
better ; if not, it must at all cost be exterminated. 

Master Joris (one of the Dutch ministers) came to us and said, if 
we would join the church, that is, the Dutch church, our chains 
should be struck off and our bonds loosed. The bishop, he said, 
had given him command so to do. But we remained steadfast to 
the truth of Jesus Christ. He is indeed our Captain, and no other ; 
yea, in him is all our trust. 

Five of their number were induced to recant and were 
set for a gazing-stock in St. Paul's church-yard, a fagot 
being bound on each one's shoulder to indicate that he 
deserved to be burnt. After repeated and strenuous ef- 
forts to overcome the scruples of the rest of the party, 
one woman only having been terrified into submission, 
fourteen women and a youth were led, bound together, 
to Newgate, where they remained some days in daily 
expectation of a horrible death. Finding them steadfast, 



364 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

and not relishing a wholesale slaughter of women, the 
queen commuted the sentence to banishment. They 
were'put on board a ship, the youth having been tied to 
a cart and whipped through the streets. Separation from 
husbands, fathers, etc., and the probability that an ill 
fate awaited them on their debarkation almost annulled 
the satisfaction that escape from a fiery death in England 
would naturally have given. 

The five principal members of the party had some 
time before been separated from the rest for harsher 
treatment. On June 2, just after the embarkation of the 
fifteen, they were again brought bound before their in- 
quisitors. Threats of burning availed nothing. " It is 
a small matter thus to die," said Jan Pieters. "We 
must shave such heretics, and cut them off as an evil 
thing from the church," said the bishop. "How canst 
thou cut us off from your church," said Hendrik Ter- 
woort, " seeing we are not of it? " 

The rigors of their imprisonment were thenceforth 
greatly increased. So heavily ironed were their limbs 
and so hideously foul was their cell that they longed for 
a speedy death. " After eight days one of our brethren 
was released by death, trusting in God ; his dying testi- 
mony filled us with joy." So great a horror of the Ana- 
baptists had English churchmen conceived, that they 
were fearful lest the ordinary criminals in the prison 
should be corrupted by association with them. 

One of the churchmen used occasionally to visit them 
in their dungeon and in the most solemn manner com- 
mand the evil fiend to depart from them. Bishop Sandys 
thought the toleration of such opinions meant the expul- 
sion " both out of church and commonwealth" of "all 
godliness, all peace, all honesty." 

But there were many in high positions who looked 
with dismay upon the prospect of a return to the barbar- 



FOXE'S PETITION 365 

ous practices of the age of Mary. A vain effort was made 
to induce the queen to give her attention to an earnest 
supplication and a confession of their faith prepared by 
the condemned. Lord Burghley earnestly strove to stir 
up the compassion of Bishop Sandys for the miserable 
men. But bishop and queen were alike obdurate. John 
Foxe, the famous martyrologist, wrote a letter to Queen 
Elizabeth, pleading for a milder form of punishment than 
burning at the stake. Exile he thought a right sen- 
tence. " But I hear there are one or two of these who 
are appointed to the most severe punishment, viz., burn- 
ing, except your clemency forbid. Now in this one affair 
I conceive there are two things to be considered ; the one 
is the wickedness of their errors, the other the sharpness 
of their punishment." He admits the absurdity and the 
monstrosity of their opinions and says : 

It is certain they are by no means to be countenanced in a com- 
monwealth, but, in my opinion, ought to be suppressed by proper 
correction. But to roast alive the bodies of poor wretches that offend 
rather through blindness of judgment than perverseness of will, in 
fire and flames, raging with pitch and brimstone, is a hard-hearted 
thing, and more agreeable to the practice of Romanists than the 
customs of the Gospeler. 

He beseeches her majesty for the sake of Christ 

that these miserable wretches may be spared ; at least that a stop 
may be put to the horror by changing the punishment to some other 
kind . . . that the piles and flames of Smithfield, so long ago ex- 
tinguished by your happy government, may not more be revived. 

Foxe's opposition to the holocaust that had been deter- 
mined upon was evidently far more a matter of sentiment 
than a matter of principle. The queen hardened her 
heart even against this tender plea. One of the five 
died early in prison. Two were finally liberated. It 
was reserved for Jan Pieters and Hendrik Terwoort to 



366 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

rekindle with their writhing bodies the flames that were, 
in co-operation with other influences, so to quicken the 
popular conscience of England as sixty-five years later 
to destroy at a stroke ecclesiastical and civil despotism, 
to introduce into Britain an era of religious toleration and 
constitutional government, and to establish in America, 
after generations of conflict, absolute liberty of con- 
science, complete separation of Church and State, and 
government of the people, by the people, for the people. 
A thoroughly sympathetic and highly instructive ac- 
count of the sufferings of this party of Dutch Anti- 
pedobaptists has been preserved in a letter by Jacques 
de Somers, 1 a member of one of the Dutch churches in 
London, to his mother in Ghent. The facts he records 
substantially as given by the martyrs themselves. " It 
is with extreme reluctance that I write upon a subject of 
which you cannot even think without emotions of the 
deepest distress." He claims to have had full first-hand 
information, and he encloses copies of the confession 
and petition referred to above. " Their confession of 
faith was scriptural, and drawn up in such a manner that 
I would be free to subscribe to every tenet, with the ex- 
ception of the article concerning oaths, in which they 
publicly confessed their belief that men should ' swear 
not at all.'" He gives the following personal details 
concerning the martyrs: "One of them, Jan Pieters, 
was a poor man, upward of fifty years old, and had nine 
children. His first wife was previously burnt at Ghent, 
in Flanders, on account of her religion ; and he married 
a second wife, whose first husband had likewise been 
burnt at Ghent for his religious principles. . . The other, 
called Hendrik Terwoort, was a handsome and respectable 
man, about twenty-six years old, a goldsmith by trade, 

1 Translated from the Dutch Martyrology of Van Brag-fit for Benedict's " History of 
the Baptists," and copied by Evans, "Early Eng. Bapt.," Vol. I., p. 159, seq. 



DUTCH INFLUENCE 367 

and had been married eight or ten weeks before he was 
apprehended." 

He gives the queen credit for signing the death war- 
rants with reluctance, persuaded thereunto by "perverse 
men and enemies of the truth," who had grievously mis- 
represented the principles of the persecuted people. He 
continues : 

The Lord forgive those who were authors and abettors in this 
matter, and so misrepresented these poor people to her majesty, as 
you may judge from their confession, which they signed near me 
(in my presence), with their own hands ; for though I do not assent 
to the whole, and am assured that they are in a mistake in regard to 
the article concerning the original conception of Christ and the 
origin of his flesh, yet as they made a Christian confession in express 
terms, and often confessed orally in my presence that Christ is very 
God and very man, like unto us in flesh and blood, and in all other 
respects, sin excepted, so be it far from me to acknowledge that they 
were worthy of death ; nay, I would much rather acknowledge them 
as .brethren. 

He refers to two other young men of the party as still 
in prison. He has earnestly labored to secure their re- 
lease, but thus far without success. He is aware of the 
fact that it seems strange and incredible to his mother 
and deeply distresses her "that those who formerly suf- 
fered persecution should now persecute other people on 
account of their religion, constraining the consciences of 
others with fire and sword, whereas they formerly taught, 
and which is the plain truth, that it is the province of no 
man to lord it over the consciences of others ; and that 
faith is a special gift of God and is not implanted in men 
by any human power." He assures his mother that 
"some of the pious and learned, as well English as for- 
eigners, who are here, did not approve of nor assent to 
it." 

It would seem that the Dutch evangelicals who took 
refuge in England during the Elizabethan age had among 



368 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

them at least a fair proportion of those who, under Men- 
nonite and Socinian influence, had revolted against the 
asperities and the intolerance of the prevailing Calvinism 
and who, early in the seventeenth century, under the 
leadership of Arminius, Uitenbogaert, Episcopius, etc., 
and supported by such statesmen and scholars as Grotius 
and Olden-Barnaveld, were to cause a tremendous up- 
heaval in the Dutch Reformed Communion. It is proba- 
ble that this liberal Dutch element that was tolerated by 
the government of Elizabeth exerted a more direct and 
pervasive influence in favor of religious liberty than the 
avowed Anti-pedobaptists, who were not only under the 
ban of the authorities, but were comparatively few in 
number, unlearned, and obscure. Many of these libera! 
Dutch Protestants sympathized with the Anti-pedobap- 
tists in all but their extravagancies and were inclined to 
look upon these as comparatively harmless. 

Meanwhile the pent-up fires of opposition to forms and 
ceremonies were beginning to break forth. Hooper had 
"scrupled the vestments." Jewel had wished that all 
" extraneous rubbish," including the linen surplice, might 
be abolished, and had stigmatized the liturgical cere- 
monies as "scenic apparatus," "fooleries," and "the 
relics of the Amorites." 

Thomas Cartwright, of Cambridge, one of the ablest 
theologians of the age, was forced from his professorship 
(1570) by reason of his advocacy of the exclusive right 
of presbyterial church government and his uncompro- 
mising hostility to prelacy and to royal supremacy. In 
1574 more than five hundred divines followed him in sub- 
scribing a Presbyterian book of discipline. Conven- 
ticles of non-conforming Puritans were established in 
many localities and many noblemen supported preaching 
of this type. Most of these non-conforming Puritans 
were quite as intolerant as were the churchmen of the 



ROBERT BROWNE 369 

time. What they contended for was a union of Church 
and State with the church in full control, as in the 
Genevan theocracy. They objected strongly to being 
persecuted themselves, but they held that it was the duty 
and right of the civil magistracy to punish all errors in 
doctrine and life and in general to execute the behests 
of the ecclesiastical authorities. 

Some time between 1578 and 1580 Robert Browne, a 
highly connected and well-educated young man who for 
some years had been zealously laboring as a Puritan 
preacher and teacher, reached the conviction that Pres- 
byterianism no less than prelacy is without scriptural 
warrant, and that according to apostolic precept and ex- 
ample the church is a pure democracy in which each mem- 
ber, by reason of his personal relation to the Lord Jesus 
Christ, the only Head of the church, has equal rights and 
privileges with every other. He insisted upon the right 
and duty of separation from a corrupt and apostate 
church. "The kingdom of God," he maintained, was 
"not to be begun by whole parishes, but rather of the 
worthiest, were they never so few." His zeal soon 
brought him into collision with the authorities. His 
irregular preaching was forbidden by the bishop. This 
seems to have further fired his zeal. 

According to his own account " he took counsel still, 
and had no rest, what he might do for the name and 
kingdom of God. He often complained of those evil 
days and with many tears sought where to find the 
righteous, which glorified God, with whom he might live 
and rejoice together, that they put away abominations." 
Hearing that there were some in Norfolk who were 
"very forward" in religious reform, he "thought it 
his duty to take a voyage to them " in order that he 
might assist them in organizing separate worship. No 
doubt it was from Robert Harrison, a Cambridge gradu- 

Y 



370 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

ate who had resided for some years as teacher and hos- 
pital master in Norwich and who agreed with Browne in 
regarding episcopal authorization as "trash and pollu- 
tion," that he learned of the people's attitude toward 
reform. In many things Harrison was less advanced than 
Browne, but they labored together in Norwich, and in 
1580 or 1 581 a Separate church was organized. 

To give a detailed account of the lives and labors of 
Browne and Harrison would not be in accord with the 
purpose of the present work. The question has aiisen 
and has been much discussed whether Browne was in- 
debted to the Dutch Anti-pedobaptists for his clearly con- 
ceived and ardently advocated views on the right and 
duty of separation from the ungodly, the abomina'bleness 
of prelatical or civil interference with conscience, and the 
rigid limitation of the authority of the State to civil mat- 
ters. That he was closely associated with the radical 
elements of the Dutch population in Norwich is admitted 
by all. There is an early tradition that his work in Nor- 
wich began among the Dutch. 1 Of this we cannot be 
sure ; but it is certain that while in Norwich he had 
abundant opportunity to become familiar with the views 
of the Anti-pedobaptists which, on a number of points, 
were identical with his own. 

His failure to follow them in the rejection of infant 
baptism and in their peculiar views with respect to the 
incarnation, oaths, magistracy, etc., is sufficient proof 
that he had not been dominated by their influence. We 
do not feel warranted, therefore, in going so far as cer- 
tain recent Pedobaptist writers have done, who virtually 
attribute Browne's entire system, so far as it deviated 
from Puritanism, to Anabaptist influence, 2 but must con- 

1 Fuller, followed by Collier, Chambers, and others. 

2 D. Campbell, "The Puritan in Holland, England, and America." and W. E 
Griffis, " The Anabaptist, in the New World," December, 1895. 



BROWNE IN ZEELAND 371 

tent ourselves with the more reserved position of the 
ablest living authority on Congregational history, that 

Anabaptist modes of thought, imported with these Hollanders 
into their new English home, may have borne some fruitage, and 
may have unconsciously affected Browne himself in his conceptions 
of the church. Though no trace of a recognition of indebtedness 
to Anabaptist thought can be found in Browne's writings, and 
though we discover no Dutch names among the small number of his 
followers whom we know by name at all, the similarity of the sys- 
tem which he now worked out to that of the Anabaptists is so great 
in many respects that the conclusion is hard to avoid that the resem- 
blance is more than accidental. 1 

It may be further said that the views of the Dutch 
Anti-pedobaptists were by this time too well known in 
England to allow the supposition that Browne was igno- 
rant of them and too much abhorred for us to expect any 
unnecessary mention of indebtedness to them. What- 
ever of suggestion Browne may have received directly 
or indirectly from the Dutch Anti-pedobaptists, it was the 
recognized conformity of their views with Scripture and 
not the fact that they were advocated by a certain class 
of men that impressed him. It is by no means impossible 
that the martyrdom of Pieters and Terwoort, which 
awakened much interest at the time, produced a deep im- 
pression on the young Puritan preacher already zealous 
for reform and aided him in reaching the advanced posi- 
tion he came to occupy. But of this we have no 
evidence. 

Finding that the bishop of Norwich and the archbishop 
of Canterbury were bent on the suppression of this little 
independent church, and learning no doubt from his 
Dutch friends that English dissenters would be welcomed 
in Zeeland, Browne emigrated with a portion of his fol- 

iWilliston Walker, "A History of the Congregational Church in the United 
States," p. 30, seq. 



372 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

lowers and settled in Middelburg, probably near the close 
of 1 581. Middelburg had long been in close commercial 
relations with England, and English merchants and others 
had some time before established there a congregation of 
Puritan proclivities. Here also Browne and his followers 
seem to have been intimately associated with the Men- 
nonites. It was while resident in Zeeland that Browne 
set forth in a somewhat elaborate way his fully matured 
system of church reform. The titles of these works will 
give some idea of their contents : " A Treatise of Refor- 
mation Without Tarrying for Any, and of the Wicked- 
ness of Those Preachers, Which Will Not Reform Till the 
Magistrate Command or Compell Them " ; and " A Book 
which Sheweth the Life and Manners of All True Chris- 
tians, and How Unlike They are unto Turks and Papists, 
and Heathen Folks." 1 He was still careful to maintain 
the right and duty of baptizing infants. 

The Middelburg church, under Browne's guidance, soon 
became involved in strife. Browne left it in disgust late 
in 1583, and after attempting in vain to labor in Scotland 
returned, broken in spirit and apparently shattered in in- 
tellect, to the Established Church. His later career was 
obscure and in every way discreditable. A portion of 
his Norwich congregation seem to have remained when 
Browne left for Middelburg, but little is known of 
their subsequent history. Some members of the Middel- 
burg congregation are said to have united with the Men- 
nonites. Browne's books were strictly prohibited in 
England (June, 1583) and two brethren were hanged for 
circulating them. 

The congregation in London, led by Greenwood, Bar- 
rowe, and Penry, first came clearly into the light in 
1586-7. These able and devoted men were arrested at 

a See copious extracts from this work in Walker, "Creeds and Platforms," p. 18, 
seq. 



SEPARATISTS AND ANABAPTISTS 373 

this time, and after prolonged imprisonment, which some 
of them turned to good account in writing against the 
establishment, they were hanged in 1593. Their posi- 
tion was far less in accord with that of the Anti-pedobap- 
tists of the time and with that of modern Baptists than 
was that of Browne. They advocated a moderate system 
of presbyterial government, and acknowledged the right 
and duty of the State to coerce heresy. 

In 1 591 Francis Johnson, a Puritan minister who had 
taken refuge at Middelburg, was converted by reading 
passages in one of Barrowe's tracts, the publication of 
which at Middelburg he was seeking to prevent. He re- 
turned to London, conferred with Barrowe in prison and 
became one of the ablest representatives of the presby- 
terial type of Congregationalism. Shortly after the mar- 
tyrdom of Greenwood, Barrowe, and Penry, he led a 
party of Separatists to Amsterdam, where a strong 
church was established. He was soon joined by Henry 
Ainsworth, one of the most scholarly men of the time. 
Soon after the settlement of the company in Amsterdam 
"divers of them fell into the errors of the Anabaptists," 
which were "too common in these countries, and so 
persisting, were excommunicated by the rest." So 
wrote Francis Johnson in 1606. 

In a polemical treatise published in 1589 against Green- 
wood, Barrowe, and Penry, Dr. R. Some sought to 
show that these Separatists were essentially Anabaptists. 
He compared the views of the two parties with consider- 
able minuteness, and as both based themselves upon 
Scripture there could not fail to be much in common. He 
asserted that there were several Anabaptistical conven- 
ticles in London and other places, and that some of their 
members had been educated at the universities. He 
pointed out the grave dangers involved in tolerating dis- 
sent. " If every particular congregation in England might 



374 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

set up and put down at their pleasure, popish and Ana- 
baptistical fancies would overflow this land ; the conse- 
quence would be dangerous, viz., the dishonor of God, 
the contempt of her majesty, the overthrow of the 
church and universities, and the utter confusion of this 
noble kingdom." 

In a writing by John Payne, published at Haarlem in 
1597, Englishmen are warned against the "new English 
Anabaptists." He mentions one Maidstone as being in 
prison at Norwich for his Anabaptist teachings. He urges 
that the prisoner be not put to death, but banished, "by 
reason, our noble prince, judges, nor State, should not be 
so reputed of, with such hard terms, by Anabaptists and 
others, as lam loath here to express." He appeals to 
the prisoner himself not to suffer in so disreputable a 
cause. 

The notices of Anti-pedobaptists during the remainder 
of Elizabeth's reign are few and insignificant. No doubt 
a very large proportion of these, as of non-conforming 
Puritans and Separatists, were driven from the country 
by the inquisitorial procedures of the government and 
had taken up their abode in the Netherlands where a 
large measure of freedom was accorded. 

It should not be necessary to call attention to the fact 
that the document brought to light about 1866 and pub- 
lished by Dr. John Clifford in 1879 as the "Ancient 
Records " of "the church of Christ meeting at Epworth, 
Crowle, and West Butterwick, in the county of Lincoln," 
has been proved to be a miserable forgery. This spuri- 
ous record begins in 1598-9. The elders of the church 
in 1599 were James Rayner, Henry Helwys, John Mor- 
ton, William Brewster, and William Bradford. Believers' 
baptism is insisted upon in the covenant, and William 
Bradford is represented as baptizing in the river Torne at 
midnight. The last two names are famous as those of 



LITERATURE 375 

the leaders of the Mayflower party that had enjoyed the 
ministry of John Robinson. Thomas Helwys (not 
Henry) and Morton were members of the Anti-pedobap- 
tist church founded by John Smyth in 1508. Many de- 
tails are given in this forged document and the great mass 
of them have been proved to be completely out of accord 
with the known facts. As this document has been used 
in certain well-known books it is not surprising that it is 
often quoted as authentic by those who have not been 
informed of the exposure of the forgery. 1 

Literature : Underhill, " Introduction to the Hanserd Knollys Soc 
Pub."; Crosby, "Hist, of the Eng. Baptists," Vol. I.; Ivimey 
" Hist, of the Eng. Baptists," Vol. I. ; Evans, " Early Eng. Bap 
tists," Vol. I. ; Goadby, " By- Paths of Bapt. Hist." ; Strype (vari 
ous works) ; Foxe, "Actes and Monuments" ; Fuller, " Ch. Hist." 
Collier, " Eccl. Hist." ; D'Anvers, " Treatise on Baptism " ; Burnet 
"Hist, of the Ref." ; Knox, works, ed. Laing ; Tyndale, works 
Van Braght, " Blcedig Toneel ; Wilkins, "Concilia Mag. Br." 
Walker, " Creeds and Platforms" and " Hist, of the Congreg. Ch. 
in the U. S." ; Campbell, " The Puritans" ; Hanbury, " Hist. Me- 
morials"; Dexter, "The Congregationalism of the Last Three 
Hundred Years;" and Dexter, "John Smyth." 

1 See Dexter, " John Smyth," etc., p. 63, seq. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

ENGLAND (1602-1609) 

JUST before or shortly after the beginning of the reign 
of James I. (1602), a Separatist church was formed 
at Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire, under the leadership of 
John Smyth. As this church was a few years later to 
adopt believers' baptism and to become the mother of 
English General Baptist churches, it claims a place in 
this narrative. 

Of Smyth's childhood nothing is known. As he ma- 
triculated at Christ's College, Cambridge, as a sizar, in 
1 571, we may infer that he was born somewhere be- 
tween 1550 and 1555. On the completion of his course 
for Bachelor of Arts in 1575-6, he was chosen Fellow in 
his college and proceeded to the degree of Master of 
Arts in 1579. He seems to have been strongly inclined 
to Puritanism as early as 1585, for in this year he preached 
a lenten sermon on Sabbath-keeping that caused him 
some trouble. Somewhere about 1 590 he was preacher in 
the city of Lincoln and was afterward beneficed at Gains- 
borough. After a long period of anxiety and question- 
ing as regards the propriety of separating from the cor- 
rupt establishment and a conference on the subject with 
a number of his brother ministers, he withdrew from the 
Established Church about 1602 and organized a congre- 
gation of believers at Gainsborough. 

Smyth and his followers covenanted together " to walk 
in all his ways, made known or to be made known unto 
them, according to their best endeavors, whatsoever it 
should cost them, the Lord assisting them." 

This church was in every way a most remarkable one. 
376 



GAINSBOROUGH AND SCROOBY 377 

It embraced Helwys and Murton, along with Smyth des- 
tined to be the fathers of the General Baptist movement. 
John Robinson, the Father of the Pilgrims, who was to 
become pastor of a Separate church at Scrooby, in the 
neighborhood of Gainsborough, who, with his congrega- 
tion, was to follow Smyth in his exodus to the Nether- 
lands, and whose congregation, after years of discourag- 
ing experience at Leyden, was to try its fortunes in New 
England (1620 onward), united with Smyth's church about 
1604. Among the other members to become men of fore- 
most rank in Congregational history, and especially in 
the early religious history of New England, were William 
Brewster and William Bradford. 

Harassed by continuous persecution and knowing that 
a congregation of English Separatists had long enjoyed 
toleration at Amsterdam, " the most were fain to fly and 
leave their houses and habitations and the means of their 
livelihood," and "to go into the Low Countries, where 
they heard was freedom of religion for all men." 

Smyth and most of the Gainsborough congregation 
made their way to Amsterdam late in 1606 or early in 
1607. Robinson and most of the members of the Scrooby 
congregation followed during 1607 and 1608. Arriving at 
Amsterdam Smyth and his company had not identified 
themselves with the older congregation of which Francis 
Johnson was pastor and Henry Ainsworth teacher, but 
proceeded on an independent basis as " the Second Eng- 
lish Church at Amsterdam." That they should have 
proceeded along independent lines at Amsterdam was 
natural, seeing that their numbers were sufficient and 
that they had so learned and so highly esteemed a minis- 
ter as Smyth, whose activity would have been hampered 
if with his congregation he had entered into the fellow- 
ship of a church already well organized and fully offi- 
cered. It is probable that consciousness of important 



378 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

differences as regards church polity would in any case 
have prevented an organic union of the two companies. 

For some time, however, the two congregations sus- 
tained the most cordial relations and full communion 
with each other. Shortly before or after Smyth's ar- 
rival at Amsterdam he published a tract under the 
title, " Principle and Inferences Concerning the Visible 
Church," which showed little or no deviation from the 
views of Johnson and Ainsworth, yet with the sugges- 
tion of sympathy with the more democratic system of 
Robert Browne. This position was more distinctly taken 
in a larger work entitled, "Separatists' Schism," which 
soon followed. He could still speak contemptuously of 
Anabaptists, classing them with Papists, Arians, and 
"any other heretics and anti-Christians," the accept- 
ableness of whose "prayers and religious exercises" 
with God he emphatically denied. 

His view of church government at this time is em- 
bodied in the following sentences : 

Christ's church, in several respects, is a monarchy, an aristoc- 
racy, a democracy. In respect of Christ the King it is a mon- 
archy, of the eldership an aristocracy, of the brethren jointly a 
democracy or popular government. . . The body of the church hath 
all power immediately from Christ; and the elders have all their 
power from the body of the church, which power of the eldership 
is not exercised, nor cannot be used over or against the whole body 
of the church, for that is an anti-Christian usurpation. . . The defin- 
itive sentence, the determining power, the negative voice, is in the 
body of the church, not in the elders. 

In this he took definite issue with the position of John- 
son, but did not go much beyond that of Ainsworth. 

It was not the question of baptism that first occasioned 
the breach of communion between the congregation pre- 
sided over by Smyth and the older congregation at Am- 
sterdam. Early in 1608 Smyth seems to have found 



SMYTH'S SEPARATION 379 

himself at variance with his brethren of the older church 
on a number of points, some of which strike us at this 
time as rather trivial. The matter cannot be so well set 
forth as in his own summary of 

" Our Differences from the Ancient Brethren of the Separation " : 
(1) We hold that the worship of the New Testament properly so 
called is spiritual, proceeding originally from the heart ; and that 
reading out of a book (though a lawful ecclesiastical action) is no 
part of spiritual worship, but rather the invention of the man of sin, 
it being substituted for a part of spiritual worship. (2) We hold that 
seeing prophesying is a part of spiritual worship, therefore in time 
of prophesying it is unlawful to have the book as a help before the 
eye. (3) We hold that seeing singing a psalm is a part of spiritual 
worship, therefore it is unlawful to have the book before the eye in 
time of singing a psalm. (4) We hold that the presbytery of the 
church is uniform ; and that the triformed presbytery consisting 
of three kinds of elders, viz., pastors, teachers, rulers, is none of 
God's ordinance but man's device. (5) We hold that the elders of 
the church are pastors ; and that lay elders (so called) are anti- 
Christian. (6) We hold that in contributing to the church treasury, 
there ought to be both a separation from them that are without, and 
a sanctification of the whole action by prayer and thanksgiving. 

It is evident that up to this time the unscripturalness 
and unwarrantableness of infant baptism had not im- 
pressed itself upon the mind of this godly man who was 
seeking even in the minutest matters to bring his life 
and that of his church into entire conformity with New 
Testament precept and example, and who was even 
supersensitive as to any infringement on spiritual wor- 
ship. His deep-seated prejudice against the Anabaptists 
undoubtedly had the effect of delaying for some time his 
application of the principle of the rigorous exclusion of 
all formalism and all unscriptural elements to the matter 
of baptism. 

His objection to the use of the book in singing psalms 
and in prophesying, while it seems to us somewhat gro- 
tesque, was of the nature of an extreme application of 



380 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

the anti-liturgical principle of Puritanism. Spiritual wor- 
ship alone is acceptable to God. The use of a book 
interferes with the freedom of the working of the spirit. 
Prophesying is utterance under the promptings of God's 
Spirit. The use of a book implies dependence on a human 
object instead of on the divine impulse. Much can be 
said in defense of his contention that church benefi- 
cence as an act of worship should be restricted to be- 
lievers. At any rate, it was a logical inference from the 
principle of Separatism that lay at the basis of the older 
Amsterdam church as well as the newer. It is evident 
that Smyth had by this time reached the position of pure 
Congregationalism in church government, every vestige 
of Presbyterianism having been eliminated. 

It is asserted by his contemporaries that Smyth at 
this time contended most pertinaciously for the position 
that translations of the Bible as being human produc- 
tions are apocryphal, and are not to be used in the wor- 
ship of God; but "that teachers should bring the 
originals, the Hebrew and Greek, and out of them trans- 
late by voice." It is claimed that this objection to the 
use of the translated Scriptures in worship was the pri- 
mary cause of the breach of communion between the 
two congregations. Testimony to this effect is so full 
and so unanimous that it cannot with any propriety be 
called in question. This again was an extreme applica- 
tion of the principle that in worship nothing human 
should be allowed to intervene between the believer and 
God. 

Having broken communion with the brethren of the 
older church on the ground of more questionable applica- 
tions of scriptural principles, it was inevitable that the 
inconsistency involved in the position of the Separatists 
as regards baptism should sooner or later dawn upon 
Smyth and his followers. They had reached the posi- 



SMYTH AN ANTI-PEDOBAPTIST 38 1 

tion of being ready to carry out regardless of conse- 
quences the requirements of fidelity to Christ and to 
New Testament Christianity. In spite of their intense 
prejudice against the Anabaptists, the conviction forced 
itself upon them that neither they themselves nor those 
from whom they had separated were a true church of 
Christ. All alike had received their baptism in the 
apostate Church of England, and they had received this 
so-called baptism not in personal obedience to Christ's 
command and on a profession of faith in him, but as 
unconscious infants. 

The exact date of Smyth's change of view as regards 
baptism cannot be accurately determined. It must have 
been late in 1608, or early in 1609, for in the preface to 
the "Character of the Beast," etc., evidently written 
after he had adopted Anti-pedobaptist views, he states : 
" I end writing this 24 of March, 1608," while a work 
entitled " Parallels, Censures, Observations," etc., evi- 
dently written before he had reached firm ground on the 
baptismal question, bears on its title-page the date 1609. 
An undated work by Smyth on " The Differences of the 
Churches of the Separation," in which he vindicates for 
himself and his followers the sufficiency of the grounds 
for separation from the older church, seems to have in- 
tervened. The date March 24, 1608, would be, accord- 
ing to the new style of reckoning, March 24, 1609. The 
"Parallels," though written before the "Character of 
the Beast," may not have issued from the press till 1609, 
which according to the old style began on March 25. 
These works must in any case have followed each other 
in quick succession. His adoption of Anti-pedobaptist 
views must have occurred some time before March 24, 
1609 (N. S.), and probably some time before the end of 
1608 (N. S.). 

The procedures of Smyth and his associates are thus 



382 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

described by their Amsterdam contemporaries : " After 
this," wrote Richard Clyfton, "they dissolved their 
church (which before was conjoined in the fellowship of 
the gospel and profession of the true faith) and Mr. Smyth 
being pastor thereof gave over his office, as did also the 
deacons, and devised to enter a new communion by re- 
nouncing their former baptism, and taking upon them- 
selves another, of man's invention." 

"Soon after this," wrote Henry Ainsworth, "God 
stroke him [Smyth] with blindness, that he could no 
longer find the door of the church out of which he was 
gone by schism, and which he had assaulted with error. 
. . . And now as a man benumbed in mind, he crieth 
out against us, contrary to his former faith and confes- 
sion : ' Lo, we protest against them (saith he) to be a 
false church, falsely constituted in the baptizing of in- 
fants, and their own unbaptized estate,' etc." 

Richard Bernard, after enumerating six earlier changes 
of views on Smyth's part, proceeds: "Seventhly, and 
lastly, if it prove the last, he hath (if you will believe 
him) recovered the true baptism, and the true matter and 
form of a true church, which now is only to be found 
pure among a company of Se-baptists," etc. 

An anonymous contemporary writer puts the matter 
thus : "Soon after Satan drew him to deny the covenant 
preached to Abraham to be the covenant of grace, which 
led him to deny his baptism received in infancy." 

Nothing was more natural than that Smyth's opponents 
should taunt him with inconsistency. He manfully met 
the charge in the following memorable words : 

To change a false religion is commendable, and to retain a false 
religion is damnable. For a man, of a Turk to become a Jew, of a 
Jew to become a Papist, of a Papist to become a Protestant, are all 
commendable changes, though they all of them befall one and the 
same person in one year, nay, if it were in one month. So that not 



SMYTH'S DEFENSE 383 

to change religion is evil simply ; and therefore that we should fall 
from the profession of Puritanism to Brownism, and from Brown- 
ism to true Christian baptism, is not simply evil and reprovable in 
itself, except it be proved that we have fallen from true religion. If 
we therefore, being formerly deceived in the way of Pedobaptistry, 
now do embrace the truth in the true Christian apostolic baptism, 
then let no man impute this as a fault unto us. 

Be it remembered that the Separatists were at this 
time agreed in regarding the English Established Church 
as apostate, and in regarding any sort of communion 
with this church as wholly inadmissible. Be it remem- 
bered, furthermore, that the central point of their con- 
tention was for a pure church — a church of the regener- 
ate. They had all received what they considered baptism 
in their infancy, at the hands of the priesthood of this 
apostate church ; they were themselves, by the practice 
of infant baptism, the regenerating efficacy of which 
they denied, introducing into the membership of the 
church those whose conversion even in the future was 
by no means assured. The wonder is not that Smyth 
should have come to an overmastering realization of the 
inconsistencies involved, but rather that any of them 
should have failed to see the untenableness of the posi- 
tion they had assumed. Men like John Robinson escaped 
the alternative that Smyth chose by receding from the 
position of extreme Separatism and adopting the position 
known as Semi-separatism, which involved a more 
friendly attitude toward the Church of England. 

With Smyth and his followers conviction was the im- 
mediate forerunner of action. What action followed 
their conviction that infant baptism in general and 
Church of England baptism in particular was unwar- 
ranted and invalid has been stated in general in some of 
the extracts given above. Repudiating their former bap- 
tism and their church organization as unscriptural and 



384 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

unwarranted, they proceeded to introduce a new baptism 
of believers, and to organize themselves strictly accord- 
ing to New Testament precept and example, as under- 
stood by them, into a true church of Christ, whose 
members all claimed to have been regenerated by the 
Holy Spirit through faith in Christ. 1 

Being in an unbaptized estate, they must first of all 
obey Christ in the ordinance of baptism. How should 
they proceed in this matter ? Who should take the 
initiative ? As the spiritual leader of his people and 
their pastor, under the former organization, it could be 
no other than Smyth himself. Should he first administer 
the ordinance to another and then receive baptism him- 
self at the hands of the person thus baptized ? Helwys 
or Murton would naturally have shrunk from initiating 
the new baptism. It seems almost certain that what 
actually occurred was this : Smyth first baptized himself 
and then as a baptized believer proceed to baptize Helwys 
and the other members of the company. This is in ac- 
cordance with the unanimous testimony of contempo- 
raries who had the fullest opportunity to know the facts, 
and was uncontradicted, so far as we are aware, by any 
member of the party concerned. 2 

As this act of se-baptism was made a matter of re- 
proach by Smyth's contemporary opponents, and has 
been similarly used in more recent times by the adver- 
saries of the Baptists, some Baptist writers have vainly 
attempted to weaken the force of the evidence and to 
repudiate the charge as calumnious. A few of the testi- 
monies of contemporaries will suffice for setting this 
transaction in its proper light. 

1 This occurred in all probability about October, 1608. See DeHoop-Scheffer, " De 
Brownisten te Amsterdam," p. 104. 

2 Dexter (" The True Story of John Smyth, the Se-baptist," pp. 26, seq.) has adduced 
the evidence in so convincing a manner as to render the question of Smyth's se- 
baptism no longer an open one. 



SE-BAPTISM 385 

Ainsworth wrote: "Mr. Smyth anabaptized himself 
with water. . . He anabaptized himself and then ana- 
baptized others." John Robinson wrote : " As I have 
heard from themselves . . . Mr. Smyth baptized first him- 
self, and next Mr. Helwys, and so the rest, making their 
particular confessions." Richard Clyfton, severely criti- 
cising both the act itself and the idea of the church that 
underlay the act, wrote : " If you [referring to Smyth] 
that baptize yourself (being but an ordinary man), may 
do this, then may another do the like, and so every one 
baptize himself." 

Even more conclusive is Smyth's own testimony. The 
passage is valuable, moreover, as showing the grounds 
on which Smyth and his followers justified their action 
in introducing a new baptism and in organizing themselves 
afresh : 

Whereas, you say that they [we] have no warrant to baptize 
themselves [ourselves], I say, as much as you have to set up a true 
church, yea, fully as much. For if a true church may be erected 
which is the most noble ordinance of the New Testament, then much 
more baptism ; and if a true church cannot be erected without bap- 
tism . . . you cannot deny . . . that baptism may also be recovered. 
If they must recover them, men must begin so to do, and then two 
men joining together may make a church. . . Why may they not 
baptize, seeing they cannot conjoin into Christ but by baptism ? . . . 
Now, for baptizing a man's self there is as good warrant as for a 
man churching himself. For two men singly are no church, jointly 
they are a church, and they both of them put a church upon them- 
selves, so may two men put baptism upon themselves. For as both 
those persons unchurched yet have power to assume the church each 
of them for himself with others in communion ; so each of them 
unbaptized hath power to assume baptism for himself with others in 
communion. And as Abraham and John Baptist, and all proselytes 
after Abraham's example (Exod. 12 : 48) did administer the sacra- 
ment upon themselves, so may any man raised up after the apostasy 
of Antichrist, in the recovering of the church by baptism, admin- 
ister it upon himself in communion with others. . . And as in the Old 
Testament, every man that was unclean washed himself ; every 
z 



386 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

priest going to sacrifice washed himself in the laver at the door of 
the tabernacle of the congregation ; which was a type of baptism, 
the door of the church (Titus 3 : 5). Every master of a family ad- 
ministered the Passover to himself and all of his family. The priest 
daily sacrificed for himself and others. A man cannot baptize 
others into the church, himself being out of the church. Therefore 
it is lawful for a man to baptize himself together with others in com- 
munion, and this warrant is a plerophory for the practice of that 
which is done by us. 

Thus the fact of se-baptism seems to be fully admitted 
by Smyth himself. If Smyth and his associates were 
right in concluding that they were unbaptized, and that 
it was their duty to organize themselves on a New Tes- 
tament basis as a church of Christ, it was evidently in- 
cumbent on them either to seek and find a church of be- 
lievers in which true baptism could be secured or to 
introduce believers' baptism anew. 

Why they did not seek baptism at the hands of the 
Mennonites, who were close at hand and were known 
by them to practise believers' baptism, it may not be 
possible to determine. The odium of the name " Ana- 
baptist," by which the Mennonites, despite their most 
earnest protests, were commonly called, doubtless had 
some influence in deterring them from taking this step. 
The difficulty of making themselves thoroughly under- 
stood by the Mennonites owing to their lack of familiar- 
ity with the Dutch language was probably another reason 
for their proceeding independently in the matter. 

As it regards the form of the new baptism introduced by 
Smyth, modern criticism has rendered it highly probable 
that it was not immersion but affusion. We need not go 
into a detailed proof of this proposition. A few con- 
siderations will suffice for our present purpose. In a let- 
ter addressed by leaders of the Mennonite church at 
Amsterdam to those of the church at Leeuwarden on 
the occasion of the application of Smyth and his follow- 



IMMERSION OR AFFUSION? 387 

ers for admission into the fellowship of the former, it is 
distinctly stated : "We ministers . . . summoned these 
English brethren and again most perfectly examined 
them as regards the doctrine of salvation and the gov- 
ernment of the church, and also inquired for the founda- 
tion and form of their baptism, and we have not found 
that there was any difference at all, neither in the one 
nor the other thing between them and us." There is 
no evidence, so far as we are aware, that at this time 
any party of Mennonites practised immersion. Like the 
great majority of the Anti-pedobaptists of the Reforma- 
tion time, they contented themselves, as regards the act 
of baptism, with the practice that prevailed around them, 
the subjects of baptism and its sacramental efficacy being 
alone matters of controversy. 

About ten years later (1619) the Rhynsburgers (Colle- 
giants) introduced immersion under the influence of the 
Polish Socinian Anti-pedobaptists, who may have derived 
it from the Swiss and Augsburg Anti-pedobaptists. 

The most competent Mennonite scholar of the present 
time 1 does not hesitate to assert that the universal prac- 
tice of Mennonites of all parties about 1609 was affusion, 
It is not probable from the context that the term "form 
of their baptism" in the above quotation refers directly 
to the mode of applying the water. It probably refers 
rather to the words spoken in connection with the ad- 
ministration of the ordinance. But the absence of any 
intimation in the controversial literature of the time that 
Smyth had introduced an innovation as regards the mode 
of administering baptism, beyond that of se-baptism, 
seems quite decisive against the supposition that the be- 
lievers' baptism that he introduced and insisted upon was 
immersion. 2 

1 Dr. J. G. DeHoop-Scheffer. 

2 For a full discussion of this point, see Dexter, " J. Smyth," p. 10, seq. 



388 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

The party that under Smyth's guidance adopted be- 
lievers' baptism and formed themselves into a new 
church consisted of about forty-two men and women. 
The foremost among the brethren, after Smyth, were 
Thomas Helwys and John Murton, both of whom proved 
steadfast in their new faith. 

About the beginning of 1609, or earlier, a division 
arose in the newly constituted body. In the meantime 
Smyth had become better acquainted with the Mennon- 
ites, and thoroughly imbued with their teachings, includ- 
ing the Pelagian or Socinian modes of thought that at this 
time widely prevailed among them. He had reached the 
conviction that he and his followers had made a prodigious 
blunder in ignoring this truly apostolic communion, and 
in introducing a new baptism and a new church order. 
What they had done in ignorance, or from culpable prej- 
udice, it was their bounden duty to undo as promptly 
as possible. That he should soon have made himself 
intolerable in the little church, a portion only of whose 
members favored his latest proposal, was what might 
have been expected. 

The minority, led by Helwys and Murton, felt it neces- 
sary to excommunicate Smyth and his supporters for the 
errors into which they had fallen. The following is their 
own justification of this procedure : 

That it may not be thought we lay imputations or cast reproaches 
upon Mr. Smyth unjustly, we thought good, in short, to set down 
some of the errors whereunto he is fallen, etc. (1) That concerning 
Christ the first matter of his flesh, he affirmed that all the Scrip- 
tures would not prove that he had it of the Virgin Mary, thus 
making Christ to have two matters of his flesh. (2) That men 
are justified partly by the righteousness of Christ apprehended 
by faith, partly by their own inherent righteousness. (3) That 
Adam's sin was not imputed unto any of his posterity, and that 
all men are in the estate of Adam in his innocency before they 
commit actual sin ; and therefore infants were not redeemed by 



SMYTH AND THE MENNONITES 389 

Christ, but as angels and all other creatures. (4) That the church 
and ministry must come by succession, contrary to his former pro- 
fession in words and writings, and that by a supposed succession he 
cannot show from whom, nor when, nor where. (5) That an elder 
of one church is an elder of all the churches in the world. (6) That 
magistrates may not be members of Christ's church and retain their 
magistracy. 

Smyth and thirty-one others promptly sought admis- 
sion into the Mennonite church in Amsterdam, whose 
pastor was the celebrated Lubbert Gerrits. 1 They " con- 
fess this their error, and repent of the same, viz. : that 
they undertook to baptize themselves contrary to the 
order laid down by Christ," and " now desire to get back 
into the true church of Christ as speedily as may be." 
Helwys, Piggott, Seamer, and Murton, on behalf of the 
church, addressed a letter to the Mennonite brethren 
(March 12, 1609) 2 beseeching them to proceed cautiously 
in the matter of receiving Smyth and his company and 
setting forth somewhat fully their position in the matter: 

We are with much gladness and willingness stirred up to write to 
you, praying you, as you love the Lord and his truth, that you will 
take wise counsel, and that from God's word, how you deal in this 
cause betwixt us and those who are justly, for their sins, cast out 
from us. And the whole cause in question being succession (for so 
it is in deed and in truth), consider, we beseech you, how it is Anti- 
christ's chief hold, and that it is Jewish and ceremonial, an ordinance 
of the Old Testament, but not of the New. Furthermore, let it be 
well considered that the succession which is founded upon neither the 
times, person, nor place, can [not] be proved to any man's conscience, 
and so herein we should ground our faith, we cannot tell upon whom, 
nor when, nor where. 

The case of John the Baptist is cited to prove the 
right of an unbaptized person to introduce baptism. 

!See the correspondence in Evans' " Early Eng. Bapt." Vol. I., p. 209, seq. 

3 Evans, supposing the date given to be O. S., has changed it to 1610. Dexter 
calls attention to the fact that the N. S. had been adopted in Holland in 1583, and in- 
sists upon the earlier date. 



390 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

And whosoever shall now be stirred up by the same Spirit to 
preach the same word, and men thereby being converted' may, ac- 
cording to John's example, wash them with water, and who can 
forbid? And we pray that we may speak freely herein, how dare 
any man or men challenge unto themselves a pre-eminence herein, as 
though the Spirit of God was only in their hearts, and the word of 
God now only to be fetched at their mouths, and the ordinance of 
God only to be had from their hands, except they were apostles? 
Hath the Lord thus restrained his Spirit, his word, and ordinances, 
as to make particular men lordly over them, or keepers of them ? 
God forbid. This is contrary to the liberty of the gospel, which is 
free for all men, at all times and in all places. . . And now for the 
other question, that elders must ordain elders ; or if this be a per- 
petual rule, then from whom is your eldership come? And if one 
church might once ordain, then why not all churches always ? 

It might have been expected that the Mennonite church 
would receive with open arms this large body of zealous 
converts to their principles. But they had had too much 
experience of internal strife to be willing to incur the 
risk of introducing into their body a factious element, or 
of alienating sister churches by entering precipitately 
upon a course that might be called in question. The 
remonstrance of Helwys and his brethren may have 
furnished still further ground for hesitancy. The Am- 
sterdam Mennonite church writes to the church at Leeu- 
warden, stating the fact that these English have been 
thoroughly examined by them, and have been found in 
perfect agreement with the Mennonite churches in every 
respect. They express the opinion " that these English, 
without being baptized again, must be accepted." It is 
stated that the English are willing to be baptized, if it 
can be proved to be necessary from Scripture and reason. 
If the Leeuwarden brethren think they ought to be re- 
baptized, they are entreated to come to Amsterdam, and 
to prove to their Mennonite brethren and to the English 
that the baptism the latter have received is invalid. 

The Leeuwarden brethren were non-committal and in- 



HELWYS AND MURTON 39I 

disposed to take any responsibility upon themselves in 
the matter. Yet they urge that nothing be done which 
might disturb the good fellowship of the connection. 

A Mennonite brother, Jan Munter, provided Smyth 
and his associates with a room for worship in "The 
Great Cake House " ; but the English brethren were not 
formally received into fellowship until 1615, about three 
years after Smyth's death. 

Helwys and the rest of the anti-succession party re- 
turned to England about 1611, impelled by a deep con- 
viction that flight from persecution "had been the over- 
throw of religion in this island, the best, ablest, and 
greater part being gone and leaving behind them some 
few who, by the others' departure, have had their afflic- 
tion and contempt increased, hath been the cause of 
many falling back, and of their adversaries rejoicing." 

The church of Helwys and Murton became the mother 
of,the General Baptist churches. Although these leaders 
objected strongly, as we have seen, to most of the fea- 
tures that differentiated the Mennonites of the time from 
modern Baptists, including the Pelagian (Socinian) type 
of doctrine, these views soon gained general acceptance 
among their followers. Before 1624 controversy had 
arisen as to the deity of Christ, the lawfulness of oaths, 
magistracy, and warfare, and as to the obligatoriness of 
the weekly celebration of the Supper. Both parties to 
the controversy appealed to the Dutch Mennonites and 
sought to secure recognition at their hands (1624-6). A 
rich literature in defense of liberty of conscience ema- 
nated from this body of believers (1614 onward). 1 

It is worthy of remark that both Smyth and Helwys 
gave clear and forcible expression to this old-evangelical 
principle. In a long and elaborate confession of faith 



tions 



See "Tracts on Liberty of Conscience," Hanserd Knollys Society Publica- 



392 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

prepared by Smyth about 1611, 1 he declares: "That 
the magistrate is not by virtue of his office to meddle 
with religion or matters of conscience, to force or com- 
pel men to this or that form of religion or doctrine, but 
to leave the Christian religion free to every man's con- 
science, and to handle only civil transgressions (Rom. 13), 
injuries, and wrongs of man against man, in murder, adul- 
tery, theft, etc., for Christ only is the king and lawgiver 
of the church and conscience (James 4 : 12)." Helwys 
wrote as follows: "The king is a mortal man and not 
God, therefore hath no power over the immortal souls of 
his subjects, to make laws and ordinances for them, and 
to set spiritual lords over them. If the king have au- 
thority to make spiritual lords and laws, then he is an 
immortal God and not a mortal man." 

It is not the purpose of the present work to trace the 
history of Anti-pedobaptism beyond the date of the 
organization of the first English Baptist church of which 
we have any definite information. From this time onward 
the history of Anti-pedobaptism becomes almost coinci- 
dent with that of the Baptists. 

Earlier Anti-pedobaptism was for the most part so ham- 
pered by errors in doctrine and in practice and so re- 
morselessly persecuted by Church and State, that it 
could not possibly embody itself in a great aggressive 
denomination adapted to all classes and conditions of 
men. Its narrowness and its erroneous views were 
doubtless due in large measure to the fierceness of the 
persecution to which its advocates were everywhere sub- 
jected. Magistracy as observed by them was for the 
most part hostile to pure religion, destroying those who 
sought to restore primitive Christianity ; warfare was 
generally waged for selfish and cruel ends and involved 

1 A good English translation is given by Barclay in his "The Inner Life," etc. 
Appendix to Chap. VI. 



LITERATURE 393 

untold misery ; oaths were employed for the most part 
either profanely or with a view to extorting from Chris- 
tian people information to which the authorities had no 
right. That they should have interpreted the Scriptures 
in accord with these prepossessions was most natural. 
Communism, so far as it was introduced among Anti- 
pedobaptists, struck at the root of modern civilization 
and doomed the parties adopting it to extinction. Sep- 
aratism was sometimes carried so far as to make its sub- 
jects narrow and bigoted, and incapable of effectively 
impressing their views upon those outside their own com- 
munion. 

Helwys and his followers escaped many of these nar- 
rowing influences, but not all. The Socinian form of 
anti-Augustinian theology, against which Helwys and 
Murton protested at the beginning, proved a great hin- 
drance to the effectiveness of the party and in the 
eighteenth century almost wrecked it. 

It remained for the Particular (Calvinistic) Baptists, 
formed by secession from a London Congregational 
church in 1633, to embody Anti-pedobaptism in a form 
that, when animated by the missionary spirit, has proved 
highly effective. In this form during the past century its 
progress has been marvelous, and there seems to be no 
limit to its possible achievements. 



Literature: Underhill, "Introduction to the Hanserd Knollys Soc. 
Pub."; Crosby, "Hist, of the Eng. Baptists," Vol. I.; Ivimey, 
"Hist, of the Eng. Baptists," Vol. I.; Evans, "Early Eng. Bap- 
tists," Vol. I. ; Goadby, " By-Paths of Bapt. Hist." ; Strype (vari- 
ous works) ; Foxe, "Actes and Monuments " ; Fuller, " Ch. Hist." ; 
Collier, " Eccl. Hist." ; D'Anvers, " Treatise on Baptism " ; Burnet, 
"Hist, of the Ref." ; Knox, works, ed. Laing ; Tyndale, works; 
Van Braght, " Bloedig Toneel"; Wilkins, " Concilia Mag. Br."; 
Walker, " Creeds and Plaiforms " and " Hist, of the Congreg. Ch. 
in the U. S." ; Campbell, " The Puritans " ; Hanbury, " Hist. Me- 



394 A HISTORY OF ANTI-PEDOBAPTISM 

morials"; Dexter, "The Congregationalism of the Last Three 
Hundred Years " and " John Smyth " ; Barclay, " Inner Life of the 
Rel. Soc. of the Commonwealth " ; De Hoop-Scheffer, " De Brown- 
isten te Amsterdam" ; and Whitsitt, " A Question in Baptist His- 
tory " (published since this work was written). 



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395 



396 



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Carlstadt, A. (His tracts are not so ex- 
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Caspari, C. P., Alte und neue Quellen 
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397 



Comba, E., Hist, des Vaudois d'ltalie, 
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39 8 



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Weber, Gesch. d. akath. Kirchen und 
Secten v. Gr. Brit. 2 vols. Leipzig, 
1845-53- 

Weill, A., Histoire de la Guerre des Ana- 
baptistes. Paris, 1874. 

Weingarten, S. H., Die Revolutions- 
Kirchen Englands. Leipzig, 1868. 

Whitsitt, W. H., A Question in Baptist 
History. Louisville, 1896. 



Wider den newen Taufforden notwen- 
dige Warnung an alle Christglaubigen 
durch die Diener des Evang. zu Augs- 
burg. Augsburg, 1527. 

Wigandus, J., De Anabaptismo grass- 
ante adhuc in multis Gerrnanias, Po- 
lonias, Prussia;, Belgicse et aliis quoque 
locis. Lipsias, 1582 (also German edi- 
tion 1576). 

Wilkins, Concilia magna? Britannia;. 
London, 1737. 

Will, G. A., Beitrage zur Gesch. des 
Anabaptismus in Deutschland, 2d edi- 
tion. Nurnberg, 1773. (Contains a re- 
print of a document issued by the 
Nurnberg authorities against the Anti- 
pedobaptists, and other important mat- 
ter.) 

Willis, R., Servetus and Calvin. Lon- 
don, 1877. 

Winter, V. A., Gesch. d. baierischen 
Wiedertaufer im XVI. Jahrh. Mun- 
chen, 1809. 

Wolny, Die Wiedertaufer in Mahren 
(Archiv f.' Kunde osterreich. Ge- 
schichtsquellen, 1850). 

Wurstisen, Baseler Chronik. Basel, 
1580. 

Zezschwitz, G. von, Die Katechismen 

der Waldenser u. Bohmischen Briider. 

Erlangen, 1863. 
Zimmermann, W., Gesch. d. grossen 

Bauernkrieges, 2d ed. Stuttgart, 1856. 
Zur Linden, F. O., Melchior Hofmann. 

Leipzig, 1885. 
Zwingli, Opera, ed. Schuler u. Schult- 

hess. 8 vols. Zurich, 1828-42. 



INDEX 



Aerius, a reformer, but not an Anti-pedo- 
baptist, 20, scq., 27. 

Ainsworth : an English Separatist, 373 ; 
against John Smyth, 382, 385. 

Amon, Hans : an Anti-pedobaptist leader 
in Moravia, 229 ; death of, 230. 

Anabaptism, "painted for those who 
could not read," 192. 

" Ancient Records," spurious, 374, seq. 

Anna, Countess, tolerance of, 301. 

Anti-pedobaptists, wide diffusion of, 151. 

Arnold of Brescia, possibly an Anti- 
pedobaptist, 35, seq. 

Arnoldists, The, 38, seq. 

Asceticism, pagan origin of, 12. 

Askew, Anne, probably not an Anti-pe- 
dobaptist, 351. 

Augsburg, Anti-pedobaptist movement 
in, seq. 

Austerlitz : an important Anti-pedodap- 
tist center, 223 ; schism in the com- 
munity, 224, seq. 

Austria: Anti-pedobaptist movement in, 
205, seq. ; extent of the movement, 212. 

Barrowe, Henry, an English martyr, 373. 

Baptismal regeneration in the early 
church, 4. seq. 

Basel: disputation on baptism in, 120; 
persecutes Anabaptists, 121. 

Battenburg, Jan, a fanatical Dutch Ana- 
baptist leader, 30. 

Bernard of Clairvaux, as a heresy- 
hunter, 35, 36. 

Bernard, Richard, against John Smvth, 
382. 

Berne, power and persistence of the Anti- 
pedobaptist movement in, 123,150. 

Beza, Theodore, work of, in defense of 
the burning of heretics, published in 
the Netherlands (about 1601 or 1602), 
319. 

Bintgens' controversy, 316, seq. 



Blaurer, Margaretta, a protector of Pil- 
gram Marbeck, 249. 

Blaurock, Georg: baptized by Grebel, 
107 ; method of evangelizing and bap- 
tizing, 107, seq. ; defends his Anti-pe- 
dobaptism, 109; disputes with Zwingli, 
no; sketch of, 131,5s?.; imprisoned 
at Zurich, 137; released, 144; re-ar- 
rested, scourged, and banished, 145, 
seq. ; in the Tyrol, 195 ; martyrdom of, 
195. 

Blawermel, Philip, a Moravian Anti-pe- 
dobaptist leader, 223. 

Bohemia, Anti-pedobaptist movement 
in, 236, seq. 

Bohemian Brethren : practised rebap- 
tism and in part rejected infant bap- 
tism, 53, seq. ; abandoned rebaptism 
in 1534, 54. 

Boucher, Joan, the martyr, may have 
been an Anti-pedobaptist, 354, seq. 

Bouwens, Leonard, a Mennonite leader, 
301, 304, seq. 

Bozen : a Tyrolese Anti-pedobaptist cen- 
ter, 194 ; persecution in, 194. 

Brandhuber, Wolfgang, an Austrian 
Anti-pedobaptist leader, 213. 

Brixen: a Tyrolese Anti-pedobaptist 
center, 194; persecution in, 194; six 
hundred Anti-pedobaptists executed 
in, 202 ; weary of bloodshed, 202. 

British church, the early, evangelical, 
but not Anti-pedobaptist, 22, seq. 

Brbtli, Hans : opposes infant baptism 
at Zollikon, 105; banished, 107; at 
Schaffhausen, in, seq. 

Browne, Robert: an English Separatist, 
369, seq. ; indebtedness of to the Anti- 
pedobaptists, 370, seq. ; in Zeeland, 371, 
seq. ; returned to the Church of Eng- 
land and died in disrepute, 372; some 
followers of, became Anti-pedobap- 
tists, 372. 

407 



408 



INDEX 



Bucer, Martin : Protestant pastor in 

Strasburg, 239, seq. ; attitude of toward 
Anti-pedobaptists, 239, 240, 244, 24V, 
249, seq, ; in England, 352. 
Bunderlin, Jon. : accepts Anti-pedobap- 
tist views, 217 ; rejects external ordi- 
nances, 218. 

Calvinism: gains the ascendency in 
the Netherlands, 314, seq. ; intolerance 
of, 318, scq. 

Capito, Wolfgang, a Strasburg Protest- 
ant pastor : tolerant disposition of, 239, 
seq. ; almost an Anti-pedobaptist, 240, 
247. 

Carlstadt, Andreas : influenced by the 
Zwickau prophets, 71 ; driven from 
Wittenberg, 73 ; at Orlamunde, 74 ; 
in Strasburg, 241, scq. 

Castelberg, Andreas: an opponent of 
Zwingli, 101, scq. ; rejects infant bap- 
tism, 105; banished, 107. 

Catechism of Polish Anti-pedobaptists 
(1574), on baptism, 336, seq. 

Cathari, 30. 

Cellarius, Martin: influenced by the 
Zwickau prophets, 71, seq., 74; in 
Strasburg, 241 ; influence of, on Ca- 
pito, 240, 247. 

Chelcicky, Peter: evangelical views of, 
50, seq. ; almost an Anti-pedobaptist, 52. 

Chiliasm : the corrupting element in the 
work of Storch, Miinzer, and Pfeiffer, 
85, seq. ; of Hofmann, 257, 268, etc. ; 
of Hut, 151 ; of Matthys, 284, scq.; in 
relation to the Miinster Kingdom, 293. 

Clementine Homilies and Recognitions, 
on baptism, 7, 8. 

Clyfton, Richard, on John Smyth, 382, 
385. 

Collegiants, 321, scq., 387. 

Cologne, Anti-pedobaptists in (1146), 35. 

Communism : a course of persecution in 
Moravia, 229, seq. ; description of the 
communistic organization of the Huter- 
ites, 234, scq. 

Convention of Anti-pedobaptists in 
Augsburg, 170, scq. 

Cooke, Robert: an English Anti-pedo- 
baptist, 352 ; disputes with the court 
preachers of Edward VI., 353 ; accused 
of Pelagianism by Turner, 353. 



Cranmer, Archbishop: influenced by 
foreign theologians to persecute Anti- 
pedobaptists, 352; an inquisitor, 354. 

Cyprian, on baptism, 6, 7, seq. 

Czechowitz, Martin, a Polish Anti-pe- 
dobaptist, 335. 

Dachser, Jacob, an Anti-pedobaptist 
leader in Augsburg, 171. 

Dakota, South, present abode of the 
Huterites, 233. 

David of Augsburg, on the Waldenses, 
46, seq. 

Denck, Hans : in Augsburg, 160, seq.; in 
St. Gall, 163, scq. ; his theological 
views, 164, scq. ; driven from Augsburg, 
167 ; return to Augsburg, 170; died at 
Basel, 172; in Strasburg, 242, seq. ; 
at Zaubern, 243 ", at Landau, disputes 
with Baker, 243 ; at Worms, 243. 

Doctrines and polity of the Moravian 
Anti-pedobaptists, compared with those 
of the old-evangelical parties, 235, scq. 

Dollinger, erroneous view of, regarding 
Peter de Bruys and Henry of Lau- 
sanne, 34. 

Donatists, not Baptists or Anti-pedobap- 
tists, 18, seq. 

Dubcansky, Jon., an evangelical Mora- 
vian nobleman, 175, 177. 

Dutch Anabaptists : in England, 361 ; 
persecution of, 361, seq. ; thirty seized 
in a suburb of London, 365 ; sufferings 
and confession of, 362, seq. 

Dutch in England, 345, seq. 

Eberle, H., Anabaptist worker at St. 
Gall, 116, scq. 

Ebionitism, 26. 

Echsel, W., an Anti-pedobaptist leader 
in Strasburg, 242. 

Edward VI., of England: favored Pro- 
testantism, but persecuted Anti-pedo- 
baptism, 351, scq. ; excepted Anti-pe- 
dobaptists from the act of grace, 354. 

Elizabeth, Queen, a persecutor of Anti- 
pedobaptists, 357, seq. 

Emden, an Anti-pedobaptist center, 266. 

England: Anti-pedobaptists in (1534 on- 
ward), 346, seq. ; persecuting meas- 
ures in, 346, 348, 350. 

Enno, Count, a tolerant ruler, 266. 



INDEX 



409 



Evervin, on mediaeval Anti-pedobaptists 

in Cologne, 35, scq. 
Eythorne, Baptist church at, its claims 

to antiquity, 355, scq. 

Faber, Gellius, in controversy with 
Menno, 308. 

Faber, J., seeks to convert Hubmaier, 
186. 

Falk, Jacob, executed at Zurich, 149. 

Ferdinand, King, mandates of, against 
Anabaptism, 192, seq. 

Foxe, John, against the burning of here- 
tics, 365. 

Freundberg, a Tyrolese Anti-pedobap- 
tist center, 192. 

Freistadt : an Austrian Anti-pedobaptist 
center, 218, scq.; Hut's labors in, 219. 

Gabrielites, a Moravian Anti-pedobap- 
tist party, 228. 

Gerrits : Lubbert, Mennonite pastor in 
Amsterdam ; negotiations of, with John 
Smyth and his followers, 389. 

Gherlandi, Giulio : an Italian Anti-pe- 
dobaptist, who was converted to evan- 
gelical views in Moravia and returned 
to Italy to labor, 331, scq. ; his confes- 
sion and martyrdom, 333, scq. 

Gillis of Aachen, a Mennonite leader, 
304, scq. 

Glaidt, Oswald : Hubmaier's colleague 
at Nikolsburg, 175, seq. ; later labors 
of, 230. 

Gnosticism, influence of, on Christian 
thought, 6, scq. 

Gbschel, Martin: an ex-bishop and 
Hubmaier's colleague at Nikolsburg, 
175, seq. 

Gonesius, Peter, a Polish anti-trinita- 
rian Anti-pedobaptist, 335. 

Grebel, Conrad : an associate of Zwingli, 
90; opposes Zwingli, ioi, seq. ; re- 
sists infant baptism, 105, scq. ; bap- 
tizes Blaurock and others, 107 ; in 
Schaffhausen, 112, scq. ; at St. Gall, 
116, seq..; sketch of, 129, seq. ; im- 
prisoned at Zurich, 137 ; released, 143, 
seq. ; in Griiningen, 144. 

Griesinger, Onophrius, a Tyrolese Anti- 
pedobaptist leader executed in 1538, 



Gross, Jacob: in Augsburg, 160, 170; in 
Strasburg, 242. 

Griiningen : a stronghold of Anti-pedo- 
baptism, 123; authorities of unable to 
suppress the movement, 136 ; con- 
tinued growth of Anti-pedobaptism in, 
144 ; immorality of clergy in, 144; re- 
fuses to execute Anti-pedobaptists, 
147 ; compelled to yield, 149, seq. 

Guffidaun, persecution of Anti-pedobap- 
tists in, 193. 

Haller, Berthold and Joh. : reformers at 
Berne, 91 ; disturbed about infant bap- 
tism, 123. 

Hamsted, Hadrian, a defender of Anti- 
pedobaptists, 360, scq. 

Helena von Freiberg, a Tyrolese Anti- 
pedobaptist, igo, 192. 

Helwys, Thomas : an associate of John 
Smyth in introducing believers' bap- 
tism, 385 ; refused to follow Smyth in 
seeking union with the Mennonites, 
388, seq. ; denied the need of succes- 
sion, 389 ; returned to England, 391 ; on 
liberty of conscience, 392. 

Henry of Lausanne, an Anti-pedobaptist 
reformer, 32, seq. 

Hermann, Hieronymus, sent forth from 
Steyer by Hut, an. 

Hesse, Anti-pedobaptist movement in, 
273, seq. 

Hetzer, Ludwig : an associate of Zwingli, 
go ; banished for Anti-pedobaptism, 
107; in Augsburg, 160, scq. ; in Stras- 
burg, 242. 
I Hochriitiner, L. : banished from Zurich, 
102 ; opposes infant baptism at St. 
Gall, 115. 

Hofmann, Melchior : a native of Swabia, 
254 ; at Wolmar, 254 ; at Dorpat, 254, 
scq. ; endorsed by Luther, 255 ; banish- 
ed, 256 ; in Sweden, 256, scq.; at Lubeck, 
258 ; employed by Frederick I., of Den- 
mark, 258; plundered and banished, 
258, scq. ; in East Friesland, 259 ; in 
Strasburg, 259, scq. ; in the Nether- 
lands, 261 ; imprisoned for life at Stras- 
burg, 263 ; at Emden, 266 ; on baptism, 
266, seq. ; in Holland, 267, seq. ; suspends 
the administration of baptism for two 
years, 268; on the will, 269; combats 



4io 



INDEX 



Lutheranism, 270; bewails his lack of 
followers in Germany, 270; on the in- 
carnation, 271. 
Hofmeister, Sebastian : rejects infant 
baptism, 112 ; driven by persecution 
to repudiate Anti-pedobaptism, 113, scq. 

Hubmaier, Balthasar : in conference 
with Miinzer, 82; at Zurich, disputa- 
tion, go; early career at Freiburg, In- 
golstadt, and Regensburg, gi, scq. ; a 
radical leader at Waldshut, g2, scq. ; 
in Schaffhausen, g6, scq. ; returns to 
Waldshut, gg ; opposes OEcolampadius 
and Zwingli, 121, scq. ; against infant 
baptism, 124, scq.; issues a challenge, 
126 ; baptized by Reublin, 126 ; baptizes 
a multitude, 126; publishes on bap- 
tism, 128 ; leaves Waldshut, 138 ; takes 
refuge in Zurich, i3g; his extradition 
demanded by Austria, i3g; imprisoned 
and probat'y tortured, i3g, scq. /partial 
recantation of, 141, scq. ; allowed to 
depart, 143; in Augsburg, 160, 166; ca- 
reer in Moravia, 173, scq. ; great liter- 
ary activity of, 177, scq. ; against 
Zwingli, 177, scq. ; on the Supper, 178, 
seq., and 180 ; on fasting in sacred sea- 
sons, i7g ; on the obligation of believ- 
ers' baptism, i7g ; apology of, i7g, scq. ; 
on the will, 181 ; on the sword, 182, seq. ; 
on baptism, 180, seq. : against commu- 
nity of goods, 183, scq. ; controversy 
with Hut, 184, scq.; delivered to the 
Austrian authorities, 186 ; burned at 
the stake, 187. 

Humiliati, The, 3g. 

Hut, Hans: a propagator of chiliastic 
views, 151 ; a leader in Augsburg, 167, 
scq. ; his death, 168; at Steyer, 207, 
seq. ; description of, 2og ; enthusiasm 
aroused by, 212 ; " The Seven Seals " 
of, 212 ; at Freistadt, 2ig. 

Huter, Jacob : early career of, ig4, seq. ; 
goes to Moravia, ig5 ; Tyrolese labors 
of, ig7, scq. ; tortured and burned, 200. 

Idolatry, Christian, pagan origin of, 12, 
seq. 

Infant baptism : rise of, g, seq. ; evils of, 
28. 

Italy: religious condition of, at the be- 
ginning of the Protestant Revolution, 



323 ; influence of German and Swiss 
Protestants in, 323, scq. ; antitrinitarian 
Anti-pedobaptist movement in, 325, seq. 

Jesuits, The, promoters of persecution, 
204. 

Jewel, Bishop, on English Anti-pedo- 
baptists, 35g, seq. 

John of Leyden, head of "the King- 
dom of God " in Miinster, 28g, seq. 

Johnson, Francis : an English Separat- 
ist, 373 ; pastor of a congregation in 
Amsterdam, 373 ; some followers of, 
became Anti-pedobaptists, 373. 

Joris, David, a pantheistic Anti-pedo- 
baptist leader, 301. 

Jovinian, a reformer, but not an Anti- 
pedobaptist, 20, scq., 27. 

Jiilich-CIeve, evangelical movement in, 
280. 

Justin Martyr, on baptism, 4. 

Kals, Hieronymus, an Anti-pedobaptist 
leader, executed at Vienna, 200. 

Karapet, on Paulicians and Thondra- 
kians, 25. 

Kautz, Jacob: a mystical Anti-pedobap- 
tist at Worms, 245 ; in Strasburg, 246, 
scq. ; in Augsburg, 170. 

Kent, Anti-pedobaptists in, 354, seq. 

Kessler, Joh., an evangelical teacher at 
St. Gall, 115, scq. 

Kitzbiichl : a Tyrolese Anti-pedobaptist 
center, ig2 ; persecution in, ig3, ig4. 

Klopriss, J. : an Anti-pedobaptist leader 
at Miinster, 280, seq. ; accepts the 
leadership of Matthys, 280. 

Knipperdollinck, B., a Miinster fanatic, 
28g, scq. 

Knox, John : a confounder of Anabap- 
tists, 356 ; polemical treatise of, against 
an Anabaptist, 357, seq. ; justified the 
burning of heretics, 35g. 

Kodde, Van der, four brothers, who 
founded the Collegiants, 321. 

Langecker, Hans, an Anti-pedobaptist 
martyr, ig5. 

Langenmantel, Eitelhans, an Anti-pedo- 
baptist leader in Augsburg, i6g, seq. 

Lanzenstiel (or Seiler), Leonard: an 
Anti-pedobaptist minister, imprisoned 



INDEX 



4 II 



at Moding, 200, seq. ; a prominent 
leader in the Tyrol, 203 ; execution of, 
203. 

Lasco, John a : controversy of, with 
Menno, 362, seq. ; befriended by Men- 
nonites, 307, seq. ; on Polish Anti-pe- 
dobaptists, 336; in England, 352. 

Latimer, Bishop, a persecutor, 354. 

Liberty of Conscience : Hubmaier on, 
96, seq. , advocated by an English 
Anti-pedobaptist in 1560, 357. 

Lichtenstein, Leonard and Hans von, 
Hubmaier's patrons, 175, seq. 

Linz, an Austrian Anti-pedobaptist cen- 
ter, 212, seq. 

Lochmayer, Leonard, a Tyrolese Anti- 
pedobaptist minister, 203. 

Lollards : not known to have been Anti- 
pedobaptists, 55, seq.; 340, seq. ; per- 
sisted in England and Scotland till the 
sixteenth century, 340,5^.; evangeli- 
cal position of, 343, seq. 

Luther: radical character of his early 
teachings, 64, seq. ; against the 
Zwickau prophets, 72, seq. 

Mandl, Hans, an Anti-pedobaptist leader 
in the Tyrol, 203, seq 

Manelfi, Pietro : an Italian Anti-pedo- 
baptist, 126 ; his account of Tiziano's 
teachings, 326 ; his account of the 
Anti-pedobaptist convention at Venice, 
327, seq. ; an apostate and traitor, 328, 
330. 

Manz, Felix : an opponent of Zwingli, 101, 
seq. ; rejects infant baptism, 105, seq. ; 
disputes with Zwingli, no ; sketch of, 
131, seq. ; imprisoned at Zurich, 137; 
released, 143, seq. ; in Gruningen, 144 ; 
re-arrested and executed by drowning, 
145, seq. 

Marbeck, Pilgram: an early Tyrolese 
Anti-pedobaptist, 189 ; in Strasburg, 
249 ; disputation with Bucer, 249, seq. ; 
banished, 250; later career and writ- 
ings of, 251, seq. 

Martyr, Peter, in England, 352. 

Mary, Queen, a persecutor of Protest- 
ants, 356, 

Matthys, Jan : a disciple of Hofmann 
and Trijpmaker, 271 ; character of, 
284, seq. ; assumes leadership of the 



Hofmannites, 285 ; proclaims the inau- 
guration of the Kingdom of God in 
Munster, 288 ; chief prophet in Mun- 
ster, 288, seq. ; slain in battle, 289. 

Maximilian II., a comparatively tolerant 
ruler, 204. 

Meinardo, an Italian Protestant leader, 
325. 

Menno, Simons: early life of, 296, seq. ; 
conversion of, 296, seq. ; leader of the 
quiet Anti-pedobaptists, 299, seq. ; 
teachings and controversies of, 300, 
seq. ; at Cologne, 303, seq. ; atWismar, 
304, seq. ; at Wustenfelde, 308 ; death 
of, 313- 

Mennonites : prosperity of, 315, seq.; 
controversies and divisions among, 
315. seq. 

Micronius, M., in controversy with 
Menno, 308. 

Millenarianism. (See Chiliasm.) 

Montanists, not Baptists or Anti-pedo- 
baptists, 15, seq. 

Moravia : a land of promise for the per- 
secuted, 150, 173 ; political and relig- 
ious condition of, 173, seq. ; first great 
persecution in, 228, seq. ; second great 
persecution in, 230, seq. ; "good time 
of the church" in, 231, seq. ; misfor- 
tunes and decline of Anti-pedobaptists 
in, 232, seq. ; Anti-pedobaptist move- 
ments in, after Hubmaier's departure, 
222, seq. 

Miinster: suppression of evangelical 
life in, 277 ; Rothmann's activity in, 
277, seq.; triumph of evangelicalism 
and social democracy, 279, seq. ; Cath- 
olics driven from the city, 279 ; Anti- 
pedobaptism in, 280, seq.; Anti-pedo- 
baptist confession, 282, seq. ; Anabap- 
tist kingdom in, 284, seq. ; responsibil- 
ity for the abominations of, 292, seq. 

Miinzer, Thomas: at Zwickau, 67, seq. ; 
at Prague and Alstedt, 69, seq. ; preach- 
ing against the princes, 77, seq. ; at 
Muhlhausen, 79, seq. ; at Niirnberg 
and at Waldshut, 80, seq. ; at Franken- 
hausen, 83 ; not an Anabaptist, 86. 

Murton, John, an associate of Helwys, 



Mysteries, Eleusir 
Orphic, Delphian, 



an, Pythagorean, 
ind Egyptian, 6. 



412 



INDEX 



Nespe, And. von, an Anti-pedobaptist 
leader in Silesia, 158. 

Netherlands : religious condition of, at 
beginning of the Protestant revolu- 
tion, 264 ; introduction of Lutheranism 
and Zwinglianism, 264, seq. ; strife be- 
tween Lutherans and Zwinglians, 264, 
seq. ; Hofmann and Carlstadt in, 265, 
seq. 

Nikolsburg, Hubmaier's Moravian home, 
175, seq. 

Novatians, not Baptist or Anti-pedobap- 
tist, 17. 

Ochino, Bernardo: possibly an Anti- 
pedobaptist, 335 ; in England, 352. 

OEcolampadius, Joh. : a leader at Basel, 
go ; disputes with Blaurock on infant 
baptism, 120, seq. 

Old-evangelical party, relation of, to the 
Anabaptist movement, 62, seq. 

Paganism, corrupting influence of, 2. 

Parkhurst, Bishop, lax in his dealings 
with Anabaptists, 360. 

Particular Baptists, 393. 

Passau Anonymous, The, on the Wal- 
denses, 47. 

Pastor of Hermes, The, on baptism, 4. 

Paulicians, dualistic and iconoclastic, 
but not Anti-pedobaptist, 24, seq. 

Paulus, Gregorius: a Polish antitrini- 
tarian Anti-pedobaptist, 336; baptized 
by immersion, 336. 

Payne, John, against English Anabap- 
tists, 374. 

Peasants' War : relation of Munzer to, 
83, seq. ; causes persecution of Ana- 
baptists, 135. 

Pelagianism charged against English 
Anti-pedobaptists, 353. 

Persecution in Switzerland disperses 
Anabaptists and extends the move- 
ment, 135, seq. 

Peter de Bruys, an Anti-pedobaptist re- 
former, 30, seq. 

Peter of Cologne, a Mennonite leader, 
disputes with Acronius, 318, seq. 

Pfeiffer, Heinrich, with Munzer at Muhl- 
hausen, 79, seq. 

Philip of Hesse : tolerance of, 273, seq. ; 
warns Henry VIII. against the Ana- 
baptists, 349. 



Philippists, a Moravian Anti-pedobap- 
tist party, 228. 

Philips, Dirk, a Mennonite leader, 301, 
304. 

Philips, Obbe, a Mennonite leader, 301, 
304. seq. 

Peters, Jan, a martyr, 364, seq. 

Pistis Sophia, on baptism, 7. 

Poland : religious condition of, at the 
beginning of the Protestant revolu- 
tion, 334; toleration in, 334; Anti-pe- 
dobaptist movement in, 335, seq. 

Poor Men of Lombardy, 41, seq. 

Poor Men of Lyons, 41, seq. 

Portner, Jacob : chaplain at Steyer, 210 ; 
accepts Hut's views and becomes a 
missionary, 210 ; at Linz, 213 ; at Frei- 
stadt, 219. 

Puritanism, in England, 368, seq. 

Pythagorean theosophy, 26. 

Racovian Catechism, on the person of 
Christ and on baptism, 337, seq. 

Raidt, Balthasar, examines and reports 
on Melchior Rinck, 275- 

Reck, Hans, an Anti-pedobaptist leader 
in Silesia, 158. 

Regel, G., a friend of Denck and Het- 
zer, 160, 166. 

Reimann, Henry, executed at Zurich, 
149. 

Renato, Camillo, an Italian Anti-pedo- 
baptist leader, 325, seq. 

Rattenberg, a Tyrolese Anti-pedobaptist 
center, 192. 

Reublin, William : a reformer at Basel, 
90; opposes infant baptism, 105, seq.; 
banished, 107; at Schaffhausen, in, 
seq. ; baptizes Hubmaier at Walds- 
hut, 126 ; sketch of, 132, seq. ; in Stras- 
burg, 246; occasions a schism in the 
Austerlitz community, 224, seq. ; with- 
draws to Auspitz, 226 ; maltreated by 
Wiedemann and Huter, 226 ; later ca- 
reer of, 226, seq. 

Rhegius, Urbanus : urges the Augsburg 
authorities to persecute Anti-pedobap- 
tists, 171. 

Ridley, Bishop, a persecutor, 354. 

Riedemann, Peter: chief pastor of the 
Huterites and author of an exposition 
of Anti-pedobaptist doctrine, 230. 



INDEX 



413 



Rinck, Melchior: a Hessian Anti-pedo- 
baptist, 274. seq. ; views of, 275, seq. ; 
protected by Philip of Hesse, 275. 

Robinson, John, a semi-Separatist, 383. 

Roll, H. : a radical evangelical in 
Jiilich-Cleve, 280; an Anti-pedobap- 
tist in Munster, 280, seq. ; carried away 
with the fanaticism of Matthys, 286. 

Rothmann, carried away with the fa- 
naticism of Matthys, 287. 

Rhynsburgers, 321, seq. ,'387. 

Sacerdotalism : pagan origin of, 2 ; 
growth of, 10, seq, 

Saga, Francesco Delia : an Italian Anti- 
pedobaptist leader in Moravia, 331 ; 
letter to Italian brethren, 331, seq. ; re- 
turns to Italy and suffers martyrdom, 
333, seq. 

Salminger, Sigismund : an Anti-pedo- 
baptist leader in Augsburg, 171. 

Salve Burce, on the Waldenses, 45. 

Sattler, Michael : banished from Zurich, 
137 ; in Strasburg, 243, seq. ; author of 
the Schleitheim Confession, 244 ; exe- 
cuted at Rortenberg, 244. 

Scharding, Gabriel : Anti-pedobaptist 
leader in Silesia, 157; pastor of large 
community of Silesian Anti-pedobap- 
tists at Rossnitz in Moravia, 223. 

Schaffhausen, Anti-pedobaptist move- 
ment in, in, seq. 

Schiemer, Leonard : an Austrian disciple 
of Hut, 211 ; suffered martyrdom in the 
Tyrol, 190. 

Schlactscaef, H., an Anti-pedobaptist 
leader at Munster, 280, seq. 

Schlaffer, Hans : an Austrian Anti-pedo- 
baptist leader, 218, seq. ; executed in 
the Tyrol, 192, 219. 

Schmaus, Cuntz, an Austrian disciple of 
Hut, 212. 

Schoferl, Georg : an Austrian Anti-pedo- 
baptist leader, 219, seq. ; theological 
teachings of, 220. 

Schroder, Jan, an emissary of Matthys, 
286. 

Schiitzinger, Sigismund : Anti-pedobap- 
tist leader, sent by Tyrolese brethren 
to Moravia, 226; pastor at Austerlitz, 
227 ; excluded for non-communistic 
practices, 228. 



Schwenckfeldt, Casper : conversion of, 
154, seq.; opposes Lutheranism, 154, 
seq. ; Anti-pedobaptist views of, 155, 
seq. ; widespread influence of, in Sile- 
sia, 156 ; in Strasburg, 241, 246 ; con- 
troversy with Marbeck, 251, seq. 

Sebastian von Freiburg, a friend of 
Denck, 166. 

Silesia: religious condition of, 153; 
labors of Storch in, 153 : Schwenck- 
feldt's activity in, 154, seq. ; Gabriel 
Scharding's labors in, 156, seq. ; Clem- 
ens Adler's activity in, 157, seq. ; An- 
drew von Nespe's labors in, 158 ; Hans 
Reek's labors in, 158 ; expulsion of 
Anti-pedobaptists and Schwenckfeldt- 
ians from, 158. 

Smyth, John : early life, 376 ; a Sepa- 
ratist at Gainsborough, 376, seq. ; emi- 
grated with his church to Amsterdam, 
377 ; at variance with the older con- 
gregation, 379, seq. ; introduced be- 
lievers' baptism, 381, seq. ; seeks 
union with the Mennonites, 388, seq. ; 
on liberty of conscience, 392. 

Socinian teachings, influence of, on the 
Mennonites, 320, seq. 

Socinus, Faustus, on baptism, 339. 

Socinus, Laelius, associated with Italian 
Anti-pedobaptists, 335; influence of, 
in Poland, 335. 

Some, R., sought to prove that Separat- 
ists were essentially Anabaptists, 373. 

Somers, Jacques de, his sympathetic ac- 
count of the martyrdom of Pieters ana 
Terwoort, 366, seq. 

Speier, edict of, 151 ; enforced in the Ty- 
rol, 194 ; influence of, in Strasburg, 248. 

Spitalmaier, Ambrose : an Austrian Anti- 
pedobaptist leader, 213, seq. ; theologi- 
cal views of, 214, seq. 

Spitalmaier, Hans, Hubmaier's col- 
league at Nikolsburg, 175. 

Staprade, H., an Anti-pedobaptist leader 
at Munster, 280, seq. 

Sterzing, a Tyrolese Anti-pedobaptist 
center, 193, 194. 

Steyer : a center of Old-evangelical life, 
205, seq. ; favorable to Lutheranism, 
206; the Anti-pedobaptist movement 
in, 206, seq. ; a council for judging 
Anabaptists, 210, seq. ; executions, 211, 



414 



INDEX 



St. Gall : Anti-pedobaptist movement in, 
115, seq. ; immersion practised in, 116. 

Storch, Nicholas: at Zwickau, 68, seq. ; 
at Hof, 75 ; in Strasburg, 241. 

Strasburg : a center of Old-evangelical 
life, 238 ; toleration in, 238, seq. ; Anti- 
pedobaptists in, 238, seq. ; persecution 
of Anti-pedobaptists in, 244, seq. 

Strasburg : Anti-pedobaptist convention 
in (1555). 309, seq.; another convention 
(1557), 3". seq. 

Stumpf, Simon, an Anti-pedobaptist op- 
ponent of Zwingli, 101, seq. 

Supper, the Lord's, perverted, 10. 

Swabian League, persecutions of, 172. 

Swiss Brethren, in Moravia, 230. 

Switzerland, political, social, and relig- 
ious condition of at beginning of Pro- 
testant revolution, 88, seq. 

Taborites, Waldensian and Wycliffite 
element in, 49, seq. 

Tasch, Peter, a Hessian Anti-pedobap- 
tist in correspondence with his breth- 
ren in England, 349. 

Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, The, 
on baptism, 5. 

Tertullian, on baptism, 5, seq. 

Terwoort, Hendrik, a martyr, 364, seq. 

Thondrakians, ancient and mediaeval, 
possibly Anti-pedobaptist, 25. 

Tiziano, an Italian Anti-pedobaptist 
leader, 326. 

Trent, Tyrolese Anti-pedobaptists driven 
into, 195. 

Trijpmaker, Jan., a disciple of Hofmann, 
268 ; executed, 268. 

Turner, against Robert Cooke's Pela- 
gianism and Anti-pedobaptism, 353. 

Tyrol, The : Old-evangelical life in, 188 ; 
Lutheranism in, 188, seq. ; Anti-pedo- 
baptist movement in, 189, seq. ; terrible 
persecutions in, 191, seq. 

Uolimann, W., immersed by Grebel, 114. 
seq. ; at St. Gall, 116, seq. 

Vadianus, Joachim : evangelical leader 
at St. Gall, 115, seq. ; publishes on bap- 
tism, 118. 
Vigilantius, a reformer, but not an Anti- 
pedobaptist, 21, 27. 
Vinne, D. : an Anti-pedobaptist leader at 



Munster, 280, seq. ; accepts the leader- 
ship of Matthys, 280. 
Vivetus, a Waldensian leader, 43. 

Waldenses : origin, 40, seq. ; doctrines, 
42, seq. ; polity, 45, seq. ; more evan- 
gelical by, 1260,43, seq.; wide diffu- 
sion of, 56, seq. ; activity of, in Bible 
translation, 58, seq. 

Waldshut, evangelical movement in, 
under Hubmaier, 92, seq. ; fall of, 138. 

Wiedemann, Jacob: against Hubmaier 
and Spitalmaier, 185 ; insists on com- 
munity of goods, 222 ; leads a party 
from Nikolsburg to Austerlitz, 222, seq. 

Whitgift, Archbishop, against Anabap- 
tists, 362. 

Wischenka, in S. Russia, Huterites in, 
233- 

Wolfgang, the cowherd, " a messenger 
of Anabaptism " in the Tyrol, 189. 

Wolkenstein, Anton von, and his family : 
Tyrolese Anti-pedobaptists, 190; trial 
and recantation of, 199; his wife, re- 
luctantly yielded, 199. 

Works, meritoriousness of, 12. 

Worms : Anti-pedobaptist movement in, 
244,245; Anti-pedobaptist convention 
at (about 1556), 312. 

Wycliffe, not an Anti-pedobaptist, ^s, seq. 

Zaunring, Georg, an Anti-pedobaptist 
evangelist : executed in the Tyrol, 193 ; 
a Moravian Anti-pedobaptist leader, 
a supporter of Reublin, 225, seq. ; ex- 
cluded from fellowship, 227. 

Zell, Matthew, Protestant pastor in 
Strasburg, liberality of, 239. 

Zobel, Georg, a Bohemian Anti-pedobap- 
tist physician, 237. 

Zurich : radical movement in, 101, seq. ; 
disputation on baptism in, 105, seq. ; 
persecutes Anti-pedobaptism, 108, seq.; 
disputation with Griiningen Anti-pe- 
dobaptists, 136, seq. ; statistics of Anti- 
pedobaptist organizations in, 145 ; dis- 
cipline of clergy, 148, seq. ; baptismal 
registers introduced, 149, 

Zwickau prophets, 62, seq. 

Zwingli, Ulrich : characterized, 8g ; re- 
formatory work of, 89, seq. ; defends 
infant baptism, 106 ; publishes against 
Anabaptism, 118. 



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